This day wasn't going to be easy. I had just come back from EDC in Vegas 3 day prior with a schedule of 19:00 to 07:00, and had to get up at 06:00, an hour before I was going to bed, just 3 days later.
Once I got there, the temperatures peaked at 115F/46C, and all the cars got way too hot, including the drivers. Then again it was just as hot in Vegas, so I did ok considering but had to short shift to avoid overheating the engine. The tires were also probably more greasy than normal, but on my last lap of the last session I got a 3:20 when my best time ever in the Mclaren was 3:30, so that's not bad :)
(hopefully another time with cooler temps, I should be able to go a few seconds faster still)
I got a sound defusing kit for my car since it was a bit loud :)
It used a 12V controllable dimmer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MHKCTLE which can simply change the brightness of the LEDs, which are of a set color. I bought the LED strip in Akihabara Japan, but I'm guessing something similar can be found elsewhere.
they are a flat trip that doesn't really like being bent
all the LEDs are in series, so if the chain fails somewhere, nothing lights up beyond the point of failure (which is why I have extra wires soldered on to make redundant paths and get around breakage
I have had some sections of 3 LEDs where one color died
All of the controllers I tried have a dimming function, but it fails to work when I use the fade dimming patterns, which means they are full bright, suck battery and blind others. I've therefore had to add a 2nd voltage regulator where I can just dim the voltage sufficiently so that the current is then also capped by each color string and therefore the brightness is controlled (you cannot limit the global current fed to the LED controller because you don't know whether it's all fed into a single color, or shared amongst 3).
Of course the last thing is that all the LEDs for a color are in series in a single circuit, so you light up all the reds, or all the blues or greens, or none. You can't turn on one LED individuallly. This is where the next solution comes in.
ESP8266/Arduino Controlled Neopixels
To fix the issue of not being able to have custom multi color LED patterns, where each LED/pixel can be controlled separately, the solution is neopixels (aka WS2811/WS2812/WS2812B). Each LED/pixel is controllable separately, which is done by a computer, in this case the ESP8266 can run my own programs to control all the LEDs.
The ESP8266 is a 3.3V based microcontroller for low power use (good when battery powered) while the neopixels are 5V powered, but thankfully the neopixels can use 3.3V signalling from the ESP8266 while being 5V powered to light up properly. The one thing to keep in mind is that neopixels use some power even if they are not lit. In my case 200 neopixels, take about 120mA when they are off, and 4.5A when they are all lit in white on full brightness.
Neopixels are almost infinitely versatile, instead of having them in single line strips like on my shirt and pants, you can also make display matrices out of them:
I've then written code that receive the IR commands from the remote and execute different code that creates different light patterns, which is explained in more details and available on this page and you can get the code from github.
Here is a video that shows all 3 modes, jump to 3:50 for the neopixel bit:
Last year, Dreamstate was in January, which was a bit cold and rainy when we got out. To be honest, it was much nicer in May, even if it was a bit close to EDC as a result. It was a great lineup, a nice 16 hours of trance with 16 DJs
This was the perfect excuse to go try my new shirt + pants with neopixels I had worked on (including new light effect code I wrote and battery saving patch to run up to 12H on a single battery). I found a few other people who were lit up, but compared to burning man where you'd get "oh, 200 neopixels, so cute, I have 1000 Watts' worth on my art car, they can be seen 2 miles away", there weren't too many people lit up. I found 5 or 6 of them though:
I've been a fan of Jean Michel Jarre since the 1980's when I was a teenager. Along with Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre is one of the founders of Electronic Music. The two of them were popular before anyone else was even around doing any EDM.
Sadly, I never managed to go see him perform way back then, so it was super cool to see that he did a US tour and that I'd finally be able to see him. Better late than never...
Here's a video summary:
JMJ did a tune with Snowden
JMJ is most well known for his laser musical harp
Thanks to my friend Arnaud, we got invited to the after party for the crew:
Tires were noe new, I was rusty, fair amount of slow traffic blocking on many laps, so not my best times, But eh, it was a day at the track, so still had a good time :)
Attila's new ride
Oh boy, this looks mean :)
Hopefully mine doesn't look too bad :)
Ovidiu doing a test fit :)
tire testing, or something :)
BR Racing, to support us and our cars. Thanks guys!
