Bringing state-of-the-art LED Lighting to Hobbyists
saikoLED was founded in 2010 by Brian Neltner to provide an avenue to provide hobbyist lights designed to be easily interfaced with other hobbyist projects. saikoLED also serves as a central location for design files and as a forum for individuals interested in participating in the project. A primary goal is also to develop open-source software and hardware that far outstrips the capabilities of any LED lighting currently on the market.
Brian Neltner, Perry Hung, and RJ Ryan first demonstrated this technology successfully at Burning Man 2010. Subsequently, Daniel Taub has become involved, particularly in the area of interface design. Through the use of the Arduino and Maple platforms, along with modular and high-quality hardware, we hope that this platform empowers individuals who are interested in learning about and creating art with high power LED lights, while eliminating the headache of difficult design problems such as heat sinking, case design, board manufacture, and WiFi integration which are comparitively difficult to do on a small scale.
The software developers are also very passionate about music, and especially the use of lighting to enhance the experience of listening to music. In that vein, PureData was used to control the lights, again using an open-source and high quality tool to enable interested inviduals to use a graphical and accessible interface to extend and explore the use of audio analysis and creation in parallel with lighting.
Brian Neltner has been designing LED lighting since 2007, with his website http://led-artwork.com. His original project and continued passion is the use of LED lighting to interact with mixed media to achieve effects otherwise difficult to imagine producing, as well as the theory of how light interacts with the eye and with pigments. This has included an eight-wavelength LED light fixture which operated over wireless and used a flex arm similar to the Saiko5. Brian Neltner has a doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, as well as Bachelors degrees in Physics and Materials Science from MIT. Dan Taub, Perry Hung, and Russel Ryan, the principle software and firmware development contractors, are also MIT alumni, each with degrees in electrical engineering.