Palette - Capacitive Addressable PCB touchwheel

Celestia Field is an interactive light installation shown in Burning Man Festival in Nevada, U.S.

It is composed of 600 standing LED rods. As the audience walk in the field and push the spring-mounted rods, their colour change. The output is a gigantic colourful representation of the people's motion across the field.

Each rod features a custom PCB with embedding a microcontroller and a motion sensor, driving a RGB LED strip. As there is no mains electricity in the desert, the whole installation is powered from car batteries.

I designed the electronics. I was brought onboard the project very late, with just a few weeks to design a system, find suitable components, order and test a prototype, and finally get 600 PCBs ready, with a very low target cost.