By: Liam Stearns and Kevin Doan

When developing ideas for this project, we wanted to find common interest between us – among our search, we discovered that Minecraft was an essential part of our childhoods. After finding this out, we wanted to incorporate this theme into our light art project.

We wanted to do something with the ‘glowing blocks’ from Minecraft. After some brainstorming, we concluded we wanted to bring the game into real life, and the best way to do that was to make buildable light up blocks.

We started off by doing some sketches, then moved onto 3D modeling and printing once we finalized how we wanted to design the blocks. After designing the shape of the blocks, we found out the best way to add lighting effects when stacking them was to use LED strips controlled by an Arduino Nano. In order to connect the blocks, we used neo magnets to ensure they stay together and to establish an electrical connection between them.