Triklits.

Saw this page about the cubitron display that was shown at the burning man 2006, and just had to get some. Triklits in short, are the ultimate christmas lights. Or as I prefer to see them, really big giant pixels.

What you get is a string of 24 RGB leds, that can be programmed. They have a controller board which can be connected to 4 strings and has a USB interface. The leds can be indvidually accessed and refreshed at 40hz, really making them giant pixels. For this project, I basically had a play with the sample code, to see how it works and made a simple 12 x 4 array of leds to use as a screen. I then programmed a simple bounce animation, with a bit of stochastics when corners are hit, to avoid boring repeating patterns. Anyways see the results for yourself below.

 

 

Here is a small user review of the triklits in more detail