Russell Eveleigh's Color-Changing Quilt Is Driven by a Hidden Raspberry Pi — and CircuitPython
Designed as a sandbox for lighting and IoT experiments, this glowing fabric artwork is impressive in its simplicity.
Teacher Russell Eveleigh has combined two hobbies into one in the creation of a quilted icosahedron with built-in audio and lighting — all powered by a Raspberry Pi and some CircuitPython code.
'I like the idea of hiding light sources in places you wouldn’t expect, especially behind fabrics," Eveleigh explains. "I would love to make a stealthy light up fraction wall, or 100 square, which could hang unassuming in my classroom ready to sparkle into life as a teaching aid. This icosahedron project gave me a chance to answer some questions and clear some learning barriers before taking on more complex projects."
Behind the heavy Jersey fabric, onto which was printed a two-dimensional representation of an icosahedron with tram lines quilted to provide division between sections, is a cardboard frame.
Within the frame are three LED strips, with 60 LEDs each, which are controlled by a Raspberry Pi running CircuitPython. A pair of speakers finishes the build, offering a musical accompaniment to the light show.
"I am hoping that I can use this quilt as a sandbox to experiment with holiday light show systems," Eveleigh writes. "The quilt is also a sandbox for future experiments with IoT, MQTT, Flask and controlling physical devices from webservers, as well as a chance to tip my toes into a pool of Arduino devices. Perhaps my quilt could become my own upbeat smart speaker, or I could connect it to my doorbell"
The full build log is available on Eveleigh's Medium blog, with snippets of the source code included.