Star Trace

Seventy-four lights across the ceiling of a lobby in Hong Kong, for David Griggs.

I wrote the lighting control firmware that runs on the ESP32 in each fixture. The LEDs are driven from mains rather than a low-voltage supply, so the firmware switches them through a triac — which makes the timing considerably less forgiving than the DC systems I usually work on. On top of that sits the settings layer and the Wi-Fi networking that makes seventy-four independent fixtures behave like one instrument.

The operator never touches any of that. There is a control box built on a Raspberry Pi with a custom touchscreen interface, and whoever is running the space uses it to adjust and save global settings patterns. Saving pushes the new pattern out over Wi-Fi to every fixture on the ceiling.

It is installed and running. I am still working through some technical glitches with David and with the property management company, which is the ordinary condition of a permanent installation somebody has to live with rather than a stage it will eventually leave.