LED Matrix Quilt

This lovely LED matrix quilt was designed by Katie Dektar, a Stanford University undergraduate majoring in Biomedical Computation. The quilt is made from 64 hand-sewn LEDs and is controlled by a Lilypad Arduino.

To me, the flickering LEDs look like trapped fireflies...in a beautiful way.

She nicely details the construction on her site so check it out.

Tags: Arduino, Craft & Technology, Lilypad

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Comment by meg on March 29, 2011 at 12:01pm: very cool and nicely made!

i get the feeling cats would love this... :)

Comment by Katie Dektar on March 29, 2011 at 10:23am: Matt -- I'm turning on one at a time, really really fast. Because of the way the grid works I can only turn on 1 LED at a time -- if I try to turn on two or more, extra LEDs will light (this is the way a LED matrix works). The proper way to display things is with row/column scanning: turn on each LED in turn really fast. However, with row/column scanning each LED is only on for a very short time, and the display is almost too dim to see unless the room is completely dark.

The reason row-column scanning doesn't work is because I have a lot of resistance from conductive thread: thus I can't create a uniformly low-resistance matrix that is 3"x3". So I've stuck to displaying things which light one LED for a longer period of time, like random walks and bouncing. Pong may also be in my future.

Comment by Syuzi on March 28, 2011 at 2:58pm: that's why it looks like dancing fireflies ;-)

Comment by Matt Dorsey on March 28, 2011 at 2:24pm: nice work btw

Comment by Matt Dorsey on March 28, 2011 at 2:24pm: it looks like you're only turning on 2? at a time...was this for artistic reasons or technical limitations of the arduino lily pad?