MIT Disco LED Dance Floor

MIT Disco

Sure you know that Disco Stu from the simpsons has got all the moves, but what if you don’t and want to kick it like travolta? then there’s only one option: head up to MIT and check out their LED Disco Dance Floor. This thing is comprimised of 1,536 LEDs made by 20,000 hand soldered connections. that’s a lot of work. it can produce 4,096 colors, can be controlled through XMMS, handles 30fps, and the best part is that it’s 128 square feet. Yes. It’s a very impressive dance floor that has insane capability. there is a log kept which is very detailed and explains the process and how it became a technical nightmare. they made custom PCB controllers to use it and soldered day and night to complete it for a dance they were having. in the end it was pulled off and quite successfully. they also have an “epilogue” telling what changes they made after the dance to improve it. that’s MIT for ya.

thanks to everyone who sent this in.

23 thoughts on “MIT Disco LED Dance Floor

  1. Does anyone know of an english schematic and insctruction set for wiring up an array of RGB LEDs like this? There’s BlinkenLEDs for red LEDs, and it’s in german, but I haven’t been able to find anything in english.

  2. Nice idea.

    However, companies like Color Kinetics have been making LED lights like this for a few years now, and a few enterprising nightlife venues around me have taken to putting them behind translucent walls, which easily could be made into floors. Controllable via DMX as well.

  3. From the moment you start dancing on a custom dance floor, you will notice the difference. As a dancer, you should not have to compromise or hold back to prevent injury. “Having an energy-generating dancefloor is a very exciting and interesting-idea”

  4. I think the 30 fps is a little off. It only does 12-14 fps for full motion video. I’m sure some animation could be done at 30fps but addressing each led at 30fps is too much data for i2c to handle.

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