For this project, I decided that I wanted to make a cloud that could be interacted with. At first, I thought I was going to make the could out of paper, but found cotton balls give a much better look. The cloud is made internally of inflated balloons that have LEDs shining into them. They work well to diffuse the light and give a relatively uniform look. The cloud is mounted on a laser cut stand that is wrapped in aluminum foil so that it can be interacted with. The cloud has three raindrops that hand from it and are laser cut paper with pencil to allow them to conduct. Max is used to communicate to an Arduino that controls the brightness of the LEDs. Max is only used to generate sounds from the input from the makey makey, I figured that the cloud was bright enough that it didn’t need any other lighting.
Below is my Max patch.
A great representation of a thunderstorm. The fact that the intensity of the light is determined by the volume of the thunder is a great detail. If you could, I’d recommend having sections in the cloud light up independently from each other to add to the realism.
The LED cotton cloud is really innovative, impressive work. Droplets functioning as pull string switches are also interesting. My advice is that the “triggers” could have more choices other than water drops — for example, a lighnting bolt.
The thunder/lightning lighting is very realistic and well integrated with the sound effect.
If the foil and water droplets were cleaned up it would clean up the overall appearance of the project.
I was wowed when this piece of art lit up. It’s such a cool interactive piece. Nice job with the programming of the Arduino. I think it pulls the piece really well together and the flickering of the light when the lightning strikes make this feel so real.
When your artwork rumbled and lit up for the first time in the classroom, everyone was surprised and in awe! This project clearly took a lot of work and programming. The only aspect I could possibly imagine improving is the raindrops – coloring them in with totally solid color or making them out of tin foil.
Awesome project! The colors in the cloud look great and using balloons as the base structure was a very good idea.
You might want to consider hiding your wires somehow. I think Thai’s method of crafting a landscape with newspaper could be very effective here. Maybe this cloud is above a grassy hill or sprawling plains?
Definitely something I would buy and decorate my room with! The light effect is awesome when it kinda spread out in the cotton cloud.
The lightning and the cloud looks awesome. I’d try and rotate the stand so I could attach it to the ceiling!
I’m really impressed that you used arduino to include leds and light up the clouds. I think if you could use water as an input that would fit in really well with your theme.
The cotton balls are a great medium to make the cloud out of. They make it look so real! Maybe adding some other colored lights to simulate some other weather patterns would enhance the overall effect of the piece.
The clouds look so convincing with the internal lighting; if you could add multiple lights that flash in different spots, it would look even more realistic.