Marc's Public Blog - Clubbing and Trance

After I figured that my previous shirt was getting a bit stale, I wanted to design EDM Party Shirt v2, which both had to be easier to wash (the previous one had LED strips all over it that were too much work to remove, making the shirt not really washable), and I also wanted it to be more special.
I had been playing with Adafruit::NeoMatrix and figured it would be cool to have a NeoMatrix on my shirt (also it would be easier to remove a whole panel to wash the shirt).

So, in the great tradition of yak shaving, I first decided that I should be able to use FastLED instead of Adafruit::Neopixel. This was mainly at the time because FastLED allows parallel output and therefore allows updating a screen by segmenting it in smaller pieces that are updated in parallel. With Adafruit::NeoMatrix, my 768 pixel panel would have taken about 30ms to refresh, or only 33 frames per second, which is not a lot. With FastLED, I was able to trivially segment it in 3 and get 10ms/100fps, which is a whole lot better for animations.
Turns out, switching to FastLED also gave me access to LEDMatrix, an alternate library which while lacking Adafruit::GFX primitives, offers another nice API including better text and basic sprite support.

So, I started a port of Adafruit::NeoMatrix to FastLED and wrote FastLED::NeoMatrix. It was actually a non trivial port, which took much longer than I thought, but I got it working in the end:

by then I was already able to display with 3 data lines, one for each 32x8 panel

In the process, I managed to plug the wrong power into the panel and blew a pixel. Thankfully I was able to borrow another pixel from a strip and soldering it in place to fix it:

Once the port was done, came time to get the panels together. Wiring was a bit challenging because I had to ensure that power was injected at a mostly equal value in 9 different points (3 per panel) due to voltage sag at higher amps. I then quickly found out that with 3 data lines at high frequency, there is cross talk between the wires, so I switched to a CAT-5e cable where each data line is twisted with its ground and the remaining 2 wires are used to bring VCC (5V). Technically my 3 panels can use up to 60A at 5V at full power. Obviously many things will melt before that, and I'm using a power converter that tops out at 10A. Even 10A is too much for the wiring, but thankfully my displays don't use that much brightness (it would be blinding to people):

two 5Ah 16V lipos give about 160Wh, just enough to run 2 panels 10 to 12H

the fancy energy meter keeps track of how much time I used and how many Ah came out of the batteries. Useful to know how much time I have left. The blue meter is amps at 5V (after the power converter) and the red one amps at 16V (straight from the battery)

on the right, I have a backup ESP8266 if the main one fails, a backup BEC (5V converter) that's technically 10A capable but not meant to do more than 5A continous, and bottom right is my older 3A BEC with in line amp meter

the new tobsun 5V converter is bulky but does 10A without issues

For the back of the shirt, I got some fabric and created an inside pocket to hold the panel:

it then mirrors the front

All this crap goes into a fanny pack, and gets wired to my shirt, pants, and glasses:

the cool part is that my back also has a panel inside the shirt that uses the shirt as a diffuser

You can get the code I wrote for the shirt here: https://github.com/marcmerlin/NeoMatrix-FastLED-IR

This video shows an early version of the code working on a desk:

This video shows the animations:

While this video shows the tech a bit more:

This year, I got to beta test my new and improved Neopixel shirt, which is now a dual NeoMatrix shirt. Sadly, one of the 2 panels shorted by day #2 (build issue which I was only able to fix after getting home), so I was running in degraded mode with only the front panel for the last 2 days. Still, people loved the shirt :)

like pokemon, you gotta collect them all :)

met some fellow Trance Family SF on day #3

If you'd like see the different animations from the shirt, you can find them here:

I was able to try a very cool VR drumming game. It was very well done:

Now, I was not the only person to be shiny, which is one of the reasons I love EDC and Burning Man:

While I didn't find anyone who was able to put that many neopixels in their shirt (to be fair mine require non trivial amounts of power for something wearable). A few people had cool displays on poles with a big lead acid battery:

this one the only neopixel based one I found

an interesting hat

cool head gear

multiple pole based ones

the 2nd fanciest ones I found were these, but based on a thick panel that requires constant refresh (also too thick to wear)

the pitch is much better though, allowing for better writing than I can do on mine

sadly the refresh rate is too poor for pictures

pretty nonetheless

the fanciest pole was this one, with remotely addressable neomatrix text scrolling display

Good job Afik

word!

Other signs and people:

not the first time I saw this one, but still hilarious

Now, you don't have to be an engineer to be shiny (although it does help :) ). Plenty of stuff you can buy (just not my shirt, sorry ;) ):

just go to the aptly named 'shiny things' store

and if you're into drum and bass, they have you covered too ;)

Anyway, let's look at EDC as a whole this year. Maybe I got lucky with my shuttle stop didn't have a wait that wasn't as terrible as last year. The ride was still closer to 90mn, later in the evening, which sucked somewhat (still about 2h30 from hotel to festival)

hilarious. Yes, we were ready... for the great event :)

The VIP area had a swimming pool (no good with my electronics), a ball pool, and video games:

oh yeah, even a maze

Some decors were straight out of burning man:

first saw this at burning man years ago, super fun, especially if you're on something

you could use diffraction glasses if you were sober

Let's not forget art cars, all of which I've seen at burning man:

They had even more fair attractions this year:

Let's not forget about bad ass fireworks every day:

Fireworks Day1:

Now, the music sets I saw on Day #1:

Drum and Bass was fun to listen to for a while,

they had awesome visuals

I'm a big pendulum fan

stargate visuals, well done

Of course, Trance, trance, and more trance :)

fancy control console

ok, using the 'help' output of the DOS box on windows, was a bit lazy :)

Day #1 Summary:

Now, we can move to Day #2:

Circuit Grounds had Hardwell and Armin Van Buuren that night:

Day #2 Summary: https://youtu.be/3aHCxI5Xq34

Finally Day #3:

Drum and Bass DJs definitely like to stand on their DJ table :)

Cosmic Gate

ATB

Let's finish with a sunrise:

Day #3 Summary:

I won't go into how hard it is to timeshift 12H overnight (I got up at 06:00 the previous day to go to a racetrack and went to bed at 07:00 the next night. That was tough.
Insomniac did a great job with the lineups, definitely more trance now compared to the first year I went. I was not a huge fan of the way quantum valley looked, it sure was hard to get good pictures through all those metal stands. I'm also under the impression that at least on the first day, they cranked the bass way up, maybe in a misguided attempt to compete with drum and bass across, to the point that you couldn't really hear much of the music anymore. Thankfully it was a lot better by day #3.

The shuttles worked a bit better this year, although the premium shuttles were kind of a joke. You were supposed to tell them months early what time you were going to go and come home, and have that be the same every day, not that you had lineups with times anyway. I ended up taking the standard shuttle most days, which sadly got moved farther away from my hotel I had already booked. I don't understand why they simply don't have VIP lines for the standard shuttles and be done with it. Having 2 different shuttle systems with different locations and less flexibility on the premium ones, makes no sense at all.

Thanks to Insomniac for the event and lineups. Also, thumbs up to anyone who came with costumes and tasteful totem poles (sadly, there are some really crappy ones too, which sometimes end up being right in the front stage, ruining all the pictures I was trying to take).