Burning Nest - LED Mushroom

Concept

Officially titled « There ain’t mushroom » (pun intended) it was designed and installed for Burning Nest 2023, the English local Burning Man event.

Isolated from the main area of the festival, it was designed to create a « deep playa » atmosphere that people stumbled upon.

Drawn by the lights, people were invited to sit down to relax, chill out or chat while looking at the light show.

Technology

It uses 20 strips of pixel addressable WS2811 LED tape, as well as 5 silicon-diffused neon-like strips embedded in the grass.

I was puzzled by the prohibitive cost of off-the-shelf Art-Net LED controllers, which pricing depends on the number of addresses in use, so I decided to design my own controller which includes 48 outputs and a very large number of universes for a very small cost. It features a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller modules and voltage level shifters. Let me know if it's of any interest.

A small computer server runs the content and sends the Art-Net data to the controller.

The mushroom cap is an off-the-shelf geodesic dome of 3m diameter. The stem is a bespoke design and built pentagonal shape timber frame.

The outer cover is sewed together using waterproof fabric. The inner cover is crease-less cotton fabric.

I want to acknowledge once again the hard work by the entire team: Roisin Bovington @roisinlovescraft (concept, structure design, build), Siobhan Hughes (concept, build), Manish Gohel (structure design, build), Alex Sim (build) Dan Holt (pre-build), Harish Persad (content consultant), Polo (build), and myself (concept, technical design, electronics and content development). And of course thank you to the Nest DPW team for their support and everyone who enjoyed it and stopped by to say hello!