Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

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There are LED's all around us, you'll see them on your modem or router, on some of your household appliances, on motorway matrix signs, in shop windows!
They are everywhere, and they come in all kinds of colours these days, some of the signs are quite beautiful, here's a mundane one;


But it's still effective and you can see that having a matrix of these LED's makes it possible to display some eye catching messages.

Now consider this..

RGB
BRG
GBR

R=Red Led, G=Green Led, Blue = Blue Led.

You could actually pack coloured LED's into the matrix in any order you like.
Hopefully your imagination is fired up now!

This time We'll run the comp for longer so you have a month to make something! So maybe your LED demo can have a Christmassy theme!

• if 2D matrix used: Maximum matrix size of 512(x) * 256(y) or Maximum amount of LED's  131072
• if 3D matrix used: Maximum amount of LED's 131072 (512*256)
• You may use any combination of colours for your leds but each led must be a single colour only. for example a red led is red and not any other colour.
• You can vary the power to your LED's so you can have infinite brightness settings for each one.
• Your demo must contain an led matrix displaying one or more effects
• You can use any playform that is compatible with windows XP+Vista.
• You may write something for web browsers as long as it works in IE7 or FF3 (or both!)
• The following emulators are welcome: Vice, Winuae, Saint, PS2 Yabasic
• Please give credit if you use ripped sound/gfx, or even better credit the original artist.
• Please write something new for the challenge, no previously released stuff.
• Do not use ripped routines. (dlls, libs, fmod, sdl, frameworks etc are fine but say what you used please!).
• Enter as many times as you like.
• Entries to be posted in this forum please with the title [LED] entry name
• Entries may be posted between NOW and Midnight of [20th December 2008]
• The winner [S?] will be decided by a poll of forum users

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• 1st Place  - Sig - 20 Karma
• 2nd Place - Sig - 15 Karma
• 3rd Place -  Sig - 10 Karma
• All entries get 1 Karma

Good luck!

I want to thank Relsoft for the idea for this challenge.

Cheers mate!

Sounds neat idea! I really hope I have time to code something for this kompo!

EDIT: Can this demo have other stuff than leds in it? Like the surrounding environment etc

Quote from: Praecor on November 20, 2008
EDIT: Can this demo have other stuff than leds in it? Like the surrounding environment etc

Oh yes, abosolutely!

Can we have a matrix of 512x256 for red, another for green, etc or do they share a single matrix?

all share a single matrix otherwise you'd lose the effect and you'd just be down to pixels. 512 *256 is pretty generous though :)

Ah, I see.

Time for a fresh coding session.

QuoteMaximum matrix size of 512(x) * 256(y)

What about 3D matrices?
(http://www.gizmodo.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/3d_color_led_cube-custom.jpg)

...or tubes?
(http://www.abload.de/img/led-tubevvma.jpg)

Great idea! I added that into the guidelines.

Funny comp :D I guess we'll see cool and imaginative stuff again !

I'd like to propose something this time but I don't have any cool idea (yet ?). But if I find time and an idea, I'm in !!

I'd say make something with LED's :)

Quote from: Shockwave on November 21, 2008
I'd say make something with LED's :)

Yup. I would recommend LED's, too. ;-)
Cool competition - hope I'll find the time to enter it!

 ;D LED's are planned :p I'm now looking for an idea about what to display on those leds ^^

Your 3D engine?

In fact I just got an idea concerning 3D ^^ but not really using my engine :P

(I tried to use my engine -and it was a really good test in fact- but there's a big problem in the "generateobj" procedures, I mean 2 minutes to build 16 spheres, it's a bit long XD )

what about you ?

I am going to do something in Opengl I think :)

What about those LED signs that only have 4 or 5 LEDs that rotate rapidly and create an illusion of more? I don't know the technical term. Is that acceptable?

This just has a swinging arm with a single line of LEDs in it I think.

@Pixel_Outlaw:
wow, that object is really amazing... is the scroller on it programable? if so, any idea where to order/buy such a thing or whats the name or company of?
Thanks! Just awesome!

P_O, as long as you use LED's it's fine :)

what Va!n said :p Where can we get this thing ? I knew the "led on moving arm" object but this one looks particularly awesome o_O

Sorry guys I just found this myself, no idea.

Maybe this (http://flickr.com/photos/centero/sets/72157601536237960/detail) is inspiring for someone...

Just out of curiosity:
Since the term "matrix" describes a rather static arrangement, is one allowed to move the leds around?

Quote from: hellfire on November 25, 2008
Just out of curiosity:
Since the term "matrix" describes a rather static arrangement, is one allowed to move the leds around?

I hope so because that's what I'm going to be doing :)
The criterea are fairly relaxed this time, last challenge was very strict this one is just a nice run down for Christmas..

Hehe, the criteria are certainly fluid in this one.  Perhaps they should simply say

'do something with LEDs, you know, the light emitting diode type things.  You can have them static, moving, in a 2D grid, in a 3D lattice, in a sphere, in a coil, in a rope, whatever you darn well like, but they can only be a single colour even though RGB versions exist in real life'

;)

Quote from: Shockwave on November 25, 2008

Quote from: hellfire on November 25, 2008
Just out of curiosity:
Since the term "matrix" describes a rather static arrangement, is one allowed to move the leds around?

I hope so because that's what I'm going to be doing :)
The criterea are fairly relaxed this time, last challenge was very strict this one is just a nice run down for Christmas..

It's on purpose :)

The last one was so strict, this time it's totally open to your creativity, but the theme is very strong :)

I'd like as many people to feel like they can have a go as possible.

QuoteI'd like as many people to feel like they can have a go as possible.

+1 !! The thema is pretty funny and brings a lot of freedom, I hope the same ^^

im going to dust off my keboard and do something for this. im thinking of using tainted love by marilyn manson as the tune and doing a muti parter so it might be a bit twisted lol.

i would like to have a bash at an american baseball led display like you see in the movies with lots of stop motion flashy things.

It's about time you had a go at another one Nino :)

Baseball meats manson would be a orginal!
The beautiful people? Plenty of opportunities for som crazy synch.

Hello everybody,

I am new here and I just register for participate ( if I can at this Challenge )
Just some questions :

The leds are purely just the idea ... is not something to do with real LED ?
So for represents the Leds, we have to use something like OpenGL , SDL , or assembly... ?
If it is in 3D , can we move the camera ( or view point ) ( or move the global structure ) ?
For the library what do you call frameworks ? ( I am not sure )
One case into the matrix corresponds to one led , so normally to one colour ( ok now, kind of multi colours led exists ) ? Or it is a case for three leds ?

Thank you for your answers

Best regards,

Hi Littlewhite,

Please feel free to use whatever method you like to create your program, be it sdl, opengl, asm, as long as it runs in windows then that's fine :)

As for having single led's being able to display different colours, each led should only display one colour.

Hope that helps and welcome along  :)  :hi:

Welcome to the comp' and on the board LittleWhite :)

Hey LittleWhite,

welcome to the forum. Cool to see another competitor in
the current competition.

Btw. Nice avatar!

Greetz,
benny!

Thank you all \o for your wellcome , and your answer.

The avatar is my unique GFX , I am bad in GFX ... hope better in coding ;)

Avatar looks kind of like a thumb print with feet and face drawn on :)

Count me in!! That is if I could make it back in time before the deadline.

Fingers crossed bro.

Damned it. I failed to enter this great competition. Played around with
ActionScript. My first attempt looks rubbish - so I skipped it. Then I
searched for new ideas and googled the internet. I found an amazing
FLASH effect incl. source (http://www.25lines.com/finalists/0812/059.txt) (only 25 lines):

http://www.25lines.com/finalists/0812/059.swf (http://www.25lines.com/finalists/0812/059.swf)

Now, everything I could think of was somehow a copy of that fx/code
so I decided to give up. I am sorry guys. To all who entered :

Good luck - it is a pleasure to watch your effects.

I tried to do something, but I had not really the time :|
Enjoy
Normally , work correctly on windows ;)
See the attachment :)

Wow lol there are a lot of new entries in 2 days :P And all are really cool !! That's a real pleasure to see all those productions :)

Ah. I was going to get started tonight, and then I looked at the closing date again.

I think I'll go and review the entries so far...

Many thanks to everyone who tried to enter this challenge, and also to those who were not able to get their entries finished in time :)

We had some really excellent demos, you guys rule.

Voting is now open!

Good luck!