Background

There is a dearth of easily controllable LED lighting available for hobbyists who wish to build and program their own systems. Our goal is to address that by providing both complete LED lighting systems as well as interchangeable modules which:

1. Meet our exacting personal standards for excellence in high power LED lighting. We would want to use our lighting ourselves!
• 1000+ lumens of light output.
• High quality heat sinking with custom built, attractive enclosures.
• Protected from damage by acrylic covers.
• Focusing optics to produce spotlights of varying sizes.
• LED Module is controllable using a simple five wire interface.
• Utilizes high efficiency switching regulators for constant current through each color of LED.
• Uses Royal Blue (450nm) instead of regular Blue (470nm) to produce nicer magentas and deep blues.
2. Utilizes a well-established hobbyist platform in order to achieve basic control, and to produce fully open-source code to control the LED lights.
• The Light Shield is designed to interface with either the Arduino or the Maple systems easily. This open hardware includes a fused, high efficiency power supply designed to power the Arduino/Maple, LED module, and a WiFi module from a single 24VDC wall wart.
• Open source firmware for both the Arduino and the Maple to allow for easy control of the LED lights, as well as configuration and use of the WiFi module built into the Light Shield. The open source firmware includes drivers which allow the light to receive and interpret packets using the open standard Open Sound Control, the next generation standard which replaces DMX as well as MIDI.
3. Utilizes open-source, high quality tools to provide powerful features missing in other LED light fixtures. Due to the open source nature of our tools, we encourage individuals using the Saiko5 LED Light Fixture to share their projects back with the community.
• Open-source example python server for controlling the lights using a locally running Open Sound Control server.
• Open-source example python GUI for light control written using wxpython.
• Open-source code for use with the powerful music analysis system, PureData which allows for easy music analysis in realtime, and communication with a locally running python server over Open Sound Control.