Art Hacking

Dave Monachello
sidnancy@verizon.net

Project blog: sidnancy.posterous.com

inspiration/history

2
Demo
 How El-wire works

electroluminescent phosphor emits light when
placed in a field of AC current.


Zinc sulfide powder, with small additions of
copper or manganese

4
How El-wire works
How El-wire works
How El-wire works
 What does it do?

Animated el-wire portrait

Driven by a home-made sequencer that animated the
el-wire

Provides synchronized sound via wave file player

The el-wire animation data and wave file are stored
on an SD card

There can be multiple animations on a card

The system will loop through the SD card directory
(fat16 file system) and play all animation file pairs it
finds

8
System Architecture

9
 System
EL
Wire
(24 segments)

8 AC lines 8 AC lines
8
AC
I2c AC lines AC I2c
seq seq
I2c I2C
I2C seq
I2C AC
speaker
CPU AC
AMP
card inverter
speaker

12v sd 12v
6v
card
Hardware – el wire driver

11
Triac circuit
optoisolator
Hardware – el wire driver
Hardware – daughter board

15
Hardware – daughter board
Hardware – propeller chip

17
Propeller cogs

18
Propeller Counters
EL Wire Portrait

20
 Software

Big picture

Talking over I2C

Playing a wave file - 1

Playing a wave file - 2

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 Software Big Picture
Main
cog

blinker el wave
cog cog cog

El data Wave
cog buffer
player

File
reader audio
lib pins

I2C SD
lib cog

I2C SPI
pins pins

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 Talking over I2C
repeat
pindir := -1
repeat 8
outa[dbgLed] := !outa[dbgLed] ' toggle the debug led
i2cObject.i2cStart
i2cObject.i2cWrite(i2cMuxAddr, numI2cMuxBits) ' send address
i2cObject.i2cWrite(pindir, numI2cMuxBits) ' send the data
i2cObject.i2cStop
waitcnt(frameTime + cnt)
pindir <-= 1

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 Playing a wave file - 1
'play the wave data from the buffer
PUB Player(pWav, buffSize, PinR, PinL) | idx, baseTime
'Set pins to output mode
DIRA[PinR]~~ 'Set Right Pin to output
DIRA[PinL]~~ 'Set Left Pin to output

'Set up this cog's counters to do D to A conversion

CTRA:= %00110 << 26 + 0<<9 + PinR

CTRB:= %00110 << 26 + 0<<9 + PinL

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 Playing a wave file - 2
buffSize--
baseTime:=cnt+15000

'Play loop
repeat idx from 0 to buffSize
baseTime += 10000 ' assume this is 8k rate.
waitcnt(baseTime)

FRQA:=(byte[pWav+idx])<<24
FRQB:=FRQA ' copy same data to the other audio channel

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Creating sync data - 1

26
 Creating Sync data - 2

AI phoneme FV phoneme

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Creating sync data – 3
 Creating sync data - 4

Data file format – frame<sp>phoneme<nl>
example el data file:
1 A

25 C

49 ^

73 D

97 E
Big picture again
Main
cog

blinker el wave
cog cog cog

El data Wave
cog buffer
player

File
reader audio
lib pins

I2C SD
lib cog

I2C SPI
pins pins
 Credits

wav player - Raymond Allen
http://obex.parallax.com/objects/324/

I2C interface - James Burrows
http://obex.parallax.com/objects/217/

SPI interface to a Secure Digital card - Tomas Rokicki - http://obex
.parallax.com/objects/92/

El wire hardware ideas – guerroloco member of instructables
http://www.instructables.com/id/EL-wire-eye-candy/

another el wire sequencer - Dave Chesavage - http://www.oceanbeach.com/
ches/travel/burning_man/artcar/el_wire_sequencer/index.html

El wire/lipsync data file – David Cuny
http://yolo.sourceforge.net/