So I’ve been making an inflatable planetarium…

It is based on the star map from Sydney Observatory and will have over 300 twinkling LED stars.
It’s quite a complicated wire-y experience as each star has to have a wire connecting it to the LOL shield designed by the clever Jimmie p rodgers which connects to the Arduino and then has code to make the stars twinkle. Oh and there’s also over a km of wire inside the inflatable! I’ve been lucky enough to have Danae with her delicate jeweller’s hands and Rory with his computer science mind as my assistants.

I will post some pictures soon of it when it is up and running for the Art With Altitude Festival in Brisbane that Urban Art Projects has commissioned it for.

In the meantime… here’s a detail shot of the ordered and numbered wires (each wire corresponds to a grid number on the shield).

This is one third of the interior section these 3 sections once wired up were sewn together then attached to the outer dome and it’s membrames- This is Danae in action ordering the chaos.

This is one (of the 3) LOL shields wired up with over 200 joins.