While my friend Patrick was visiting, we went to visit the intel computer museum that is nearby. It's not huge, but worth an hour. They have a good history of computing from their perspective, including all the chips they made over time. Nice to see them again.
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 :)
Another year, another EDC. Weather in Vegas was stupid hot (peaks of 115F/46C). I got another chance to try my new Neopixel shirt/pants combo, although getting all the electronics through security in airports, isn't ideal...
Before the first day started, some locations had small markets where you could buy all the rave gear you could need, for those who didn't come prepared :)
and you could spend hours making your bracelets. I shouldn't make fun because I spent even more hours on my LED shirt :)
More rave gear on site if you needed it:
Getting to the festival grounds has become an increasing problem, moving almost 150,000 people to and from the racetrack in a 3H window, or so, has become a real challenge, despite huge amount of busses (the busses themselves had 3H-ish lines in some places).
those folks made full use of carpooling :)
Most people, including me, took shuttles, which took a reasonable enough 1H to get there and back, but they had stupid lines that could take up to 3H. The picture below is the best possible case scenario I saw one day I got lucky. Some people got close to passing out in the heat, and apparently one person died in line on the way back due to a medical issue that was not addressed timely enough :(
While Insomniac had plenty of busses, the loading was not streamlined enough and included a lot of unnecessary waits, making some lines ridiculously long. One day, I took another line to another hotel just so that I could get back to Vegas and then took a short cab back to my hotel:
Anyway, once arrived at the racetrack, things were good. Pictures of the grounds:
it looks less impresive during the day
sunrise coming
You could even get weddings:
Many carnival rides, but the lines were long at most of them0
And the ball pit was a fun place to relax :)
Pictures of people and signs:
bad ass tatoo
Other people were lit up, like me:
I remember this guy from last year, awesome costume and makeup
expensive triple row LED shoes
Fun signs:
damn straight!
haha!
This year definitely had a nice collection of art cars from burning man:
dancetronauts
nicely gave me a tour
Of course, EDC was about lots of great DJs, and lots of great DJs it was:
Armin
Awesome fireworks:
Day #2:
Ruben de Ronde played an awesome set
Tiesto was back, not playing Trance :)
Another solid set from Above and Beyond
Awesome fireworks again:
Day #3 was sadly shorter for me, great lineup, but not enough sleep and I was too tired to enjoy the end:
PvD
After PvD, I lamed out, went back to the airport and flew back home to get some much needed sleep. I still had a great time despite this.
What insomniac needs to fix for next year:
no VIP lines at many shuttle stops, so basically VIP didn't get you in and out any quicker in many places :(
streamline the bus loading/unloading to improve throughput
Lines like the Village loading in front of Luxor, were 2-3H in the sun. That's totally not ok.
What they did great:
the Trance lineup was solid, even if the stage, Quantum Valley, was a lesser one
the searches were not over the top (I didn't have to empty every single last pocket of everything)
Like last years, I went to attend EDC, and honestly I didn't have many waking hours that weren't spent there, but here are some pictures of the few of them:
I had a nice kobe beef burger with seared foie gras and black truffle on top. Pricey, but damn good :)
I went to the Luxor to see the Bodies and Titanic exhibitions. Both were good, but no pictures allowed:
Other random pictures:
gondola ride in 115F weather...
And on the way to/from EDC, we drove through the nearby air force base, a couple of pictures:
On the last day, I did the high roller 30mn loop around sunset:
And that was that for Vegas, nothing much more, due to sheer lack of time.
Since I've met plenty of people who complimented for my neopixel shirt and pants combo, and some who asked questions about them, I thought I'd write some quick page to explain how it all works and how you can do similar things, since it's more fun if I'm not the only one lit up at Dreamstate (which has been less of a problem at burning man).
So, I have 3 versions of the shirt, let's go through them depending on how complex you'd like to go:
Multi Color LED strip, non controllable
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:
