Perseverance pays!
It was about a year ago when I began to get bored with my selfie ring light and its stock settings and colors. Right around then I learned about programmable LEDs called neopixel LEDs and in a business meeting my business partner, Erik Larson, said “It would be really cool if we had some way to program every single individual in the light ring with a custom color.” Within three weeks I had a very basic working prototype that controlled not one ring of the neopixel LEDs but three! With ring selection buttons, dials for the red/green/blue components of each LED, and a dial for the dimmer I had created the first functional model of what later became the Halo Light System! With the help of my partners in Resonant Devices, we finally arrived at a prototype of something we call the Halo Light System Basic. With this device, a user can “paint” an array of three rings of LEDs for a total of 104 programmable LEDs. Using the on-board storage, the user can store up to SIX custom arrays (or color schemes on the 3-ring light source). These remain stored even after powering down the device. Ready for use in future experiments, these stored arrays can be altered and re-saved either in the same storage spot or as a new array. The LCD screen on the controller allows the user to see what RGB codes they are using for the colors. These codes appear on the screen as values between 0 and 255 for each of the red, green and blue components of each LED. For instance, to achieve yellow, we slide the red and green sliders to 255, and turn the blue slider down to 0. Using the Pixel Selector knob, the user can then paint this color around the chosen ring, or they can opt to choose which LEDs get that color specifically. The LCD screen also displays the Mode the user is in, the selected color array, and the dimmer value (between 0-100). We have *many* plans for our Halo Light System, including DJ/VJ projection, children’s toys (think of the Lite Brite), and general lighting for entertainment. I am actively coding the next version of this device, called the Halo Premium. The premium version will have with it the capability of designing custom sequences of your stored arrays, each element lasting for a chosen length of time, running automatically or under manual control. A user will have the option of choosing transitions to occur between sequence elements, such as “Fade”, “Flash”, “Ripple”, “Spin”, and “Spiral”. Further, the user will be able to choose animations for each sequence element, causing the sequence elements to animate while displaying. Options for animations will include “Spin”, “Flash”, and “Ripple” with user-defined BPM rates for each animation to be easily tied to an audio input. Folks, the ideas have spread so far with this invention that ultimately we’ll have three models offering increased features beyond what’s been written here. Stay tuned, this is quite a year of releasing these one-of-a-kind inventions! Follow us on our website: https://www.resonantdevices.com/products.html
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