The photo on the left was taken at 3am as we were finishing up our qualifying entry to the Red Bull Creation challenge.
Here is Popular Mechanics coverage of the winners.
Our submission:

Congratulations Harford Hackerspace! Great Joy!

Your team has made it to the final round of Red Bull Creation, and you are invited to come to New York to take part in the ultimate 72 hour build-a-thon!

Go ahead and jump up and down, run around, call everyone you know (most importantly your teammates) and do what you need to do to celebrate, cause you’re invited to take the final challenge! Yes it’s true. You Won.

This is what you gotta do next:

1. Know what you are committing to:
By Accepting the Red Bull Creation Challenge, your team is committing to taking part in a 72 hour no holds barred invention competition build-a-thon. The event takes place from NOON Thursday, July 7 through 8PM Sunday July 10 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. You and your team will compete alongside 15 other winning teams (16 teams, 64 team members total) in a challenge that will not be disclosed till the kick off party.

2. Check the dates:
In order for your team to accept the challenge we need for you to confirm that all four of your team members can commit to the following days in NYC. (Note- we will be providing some financial support to get you and your teammates there, see below)

-July 6th 6PM-Team members must be present for the registration kick off party, team meet and greet, team “weigh-in” and the official announcement of the Red Bull Creation challenge.
-July 7-10 -All of your team members need to be on-site, building, and in it to win it.

3. Send us your confirmation: Red Pill/ Blue Pill Which do You Choose.
Once you have confirmed that all four of your team members can commit to the full RBC challenge email us at blah_blah_blahe@gmail.com with a big “YES.”

*We will also be contacting each team individually in the next 3 days via cellular technology to answer any questions you might have and explain in detail what is in store for each team should they choose to accept.

4. Deadline to commit: May 25, 7pm PST:
If we do not have a confirmation from you by May 25th at 7:00pm PST, we will have to unfortunately ask you to forfeit your “chair”, and an alternate team will be chosen.

FAQs:

This is great, but how do we get all the way to NYC?
Your team is awarded a $2,000 stipend to get all of ya to the Big Apple, and otherwise support this endeavor. This is your loot and how you spend it is completely up to you. Half will be paid upon accepting the challenge, the second half once you arrive on-site.

Where will will we stay once we are there?
For the duration of the challenge we will provide each team with an RV and basic amenities. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s your trailer (and besides, you’re not coming to New York to get beauty rest!). If you want to setup other accommodations, that’s fine too.

RV Check-in: Wed, July 6th
RV Check-out: Sunday July 10th

What about food, are you going to feed us while we build for 72 hours straight?
We will be supplying some food while you’re on-site (NYC’s finest food carts, taco trucks, pizzas, etc). Beverages, and of course lots of Red Bull, are also included.

What is the build theme of this final competition ?
That, my friends, is a mystery. However, we’re going to give you some hints starting 2 weeks beforehand so you can partially prepare. Accept, and stay tuned to the twitters in the wind.

Can my team bring any tools are spare parts?
Each team is allowed to bring 200lbs of stuff. This may include any type of specialty tools, raw material and raw components (nothing assembled, individual parts only). July 6th there will be a “weigh-in” for each team during the team registration Kick-off party.

What will be available for teams to use?
Each team will have their own personal workshop on-site. Each workshop will be stocked with tools for you to use (and they are yours to take home !). In addition, there will be a central industrial tool area/ buildshop. We will also have a stockpile of specialty materials on-site for you to use. (Note: we will send you a specific list of available tools soon). All other parts must be somehow acquired over the 72 hours.

What happens when the 72 hour build is finished?
-At Noon on Sunday, July 10th a bell will toll to signal the end of the Red Bull Creation 72hr build-a-thon. A great cheer will be heard from within a one block radius. Each teams Creation will then be moved via flat bed trucks in a mini-parade through Brooklyn 1.2 miles to McCarren Park. It is here where we are going to have a little “show and tell” for the neighborhood. Creations will be judged by our panel of judges, and the top 3 creations will be announced to crowd. And again, there will be great celebration!

Will this be filmed?
Yes. Throughout the duration of the challenge and the event, you might be filmed, and the footage could be used in TV and the internets- you must be cool with this. Also, your team must be prepared to stand in front of people and talk about what you made, and how you did it.

Whats in it for us?
Most importantly, fun! Then fame, glory, and money. Oh and Tools!

-$10,000 in cash donations to the winning teams (1st Place), $5,000 (2nd Place), $3,000 and (3rd place) $2,000. This money is intended to support your team’s future endeavours and projects.

-The winning teams will also be donated the tools from the build-a-thon workshop (plasma cutter, welders, etc).

-Each team, winning or not, will take home additional tools!!

Congratulations and we look forward to hearing from you soon!

Mad props to all,
The Red Bull Creation Team.

Like most normal people, I enjoy blinky lights.  Although I helped build the ring of lights in the Tron disc, I was not involved with any of the hardware or software used to actually control the LEDs.  Prior to this project, I had never done anything more than simple PWM control of a few LEDs directly from a micro-controller, so I decided it was a good time to learn how to control a lot of LEDs.  Since this was done for the purpose of learning, I did everything as difficultly as possible, such as building my own LED array on a protoboard instead of just buying an array.  I also wrote code to bit-bang the serial data instead of just using the compiler’s built in SPI function.  But, I wanted a generic serial data module anyway after dealing with the Nokia 6100 and it’s weird 9-bit SPI.  The main point of the whole project was to simply do it myself without asking anyone at the space for help with anything.  I’m sure the code could be a lot better, but it does what it is supposed to do (I think).  :)

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Me and my wife recently had our first child.  I’ve been trying to come up with some projects I can do for the kid.  Well, around this time of the year the fireflies go crazy around my house, so we came up with the idea to do led fireflies in a jar.  It should be something cool for him to stare at and is easy to build.

Schematics, C source code and hex file are available here on our wiki.  If you want to build one it should only take about an hour.

I’m planning on making a version 2 with some changes, stay tuned for that one.

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