Inspiration

I’ve always enjoyed watching drones fly in the sky. I was recently at the Lexington, MA drone show in preparation for the 250th anniversary celebration and was fascinated when seeing history in lights. Although I am not able recreate this storytelling I worked on a simple light show with drones.

Concept

My concept was to create several drones that flicker in different colors to give the illusion of flying. I got inspiration from Lite Brite, a toy I enjoyed playing with as a kid and took apart an LCD monitor as a color filter. My idea was to create a Lite Brite type display with different colored drones flickering. To give a visual effect, I used Adobe Animate to create a looping video of colored squares that change colors and flicker at varying speeds.

Execution

Getting the parts of this project took awhile with several failed attempts when trying to figure out how it was going to work. I knew I wanted to use an LCD monitor as my light filter, but I did not know how to make it come together as creative art projects are difficult for me. To start off with, I took apart several LCD monitors, 3 in total. They were fragile and kept breaking. Note to self, ribbon cables are very fragile. I discovered that some monitors use two PCBs that are attached on two contiguous sides of the display. They have a small ribbon cable connecting them so you cannot move the PCBs so they do not block part of the display.

Next I made a wooden box to house the LCD screen and holes for 4 LED bulbs as the light source. To control the LCD, I used the original driver board that was part of the monitor.

Next, it was time to make the pegs which are similar to Lite Brite pegs. I used clear 3/16″ acrylic rods which I cut using a small band saw into 1/2″ pegs. I then used an a drill press to create the holes for the pegs to create drone patterns

To display the drones, I made five colored squares using Adobe Animate. I played with the colors, sizes, distances, and speed for both the color changing and flashing of each block to make it look like the drones were blinking in the sky and had movement.

Final Design