The incredibly talented Pem Lasota, Aram Ebtekar and I put together a small project to enhance the music experience in our living room.

What ensued is the first of many projects we plan to roll out - all focused on building the greatest living-room music experience in the world.

The setup involves 4096 LEDs arranged in a matrix, powered by a raspberry pi and a beefy condenser mic. The electronics fit into a 3D printed case. Pem did a significant chunk of this in Solidworks - a piece of software I was extremely impressed with. In one of the sessions, I was able to make reasonable headway with mild supervision. Few pieces of software are this easy to pick up. Solidworks have done a solid job.

Fresh out of the 3d printer

A photo posted by Shriphani Palakodety (@life_of_shriphani) on Jul 24, 2016 at 11:50am PDT

and when everything is put together, it looks like this:

Step 2

A photo posted by Shriphani Palakodety (@life_of_shriphani) on Jul 24, 2016 at 7:38pm PDT

The frame listens via the condenser mic and generates beautiful visualizations when it “hears” audio. This is what happens when we blast Pavarotti on our music system:

#Pavarotti's incredible range on our #raspberrypi powered picture frame

A video posted by Shriphani Palakodety (@life_of_shriphani) on Jul 30, 2016 at 2:48pm PDT

A neutrino effect to Flume's Hyperparadise:

#whenthebassdrops @flumemusic hyper paradise

A video posted by Shriphani Palakodety (@life_of_shriphani) on Aug 9, 2016 at 7:35pm PDT

The Matrix effect when the bass drops:

When the bass drops

A video posted by Shriphani Palakodety (@life_of_shriphani) on Aug 8, 2016 at 7:10pm PDT