Imagery Sells

[Headroom]

I've recently been presented with the opportunity to showcase my artwork in an iStore, which in this case is the only Apple authorized reseller in the Area.
My artwork is not CGI but I rather use Indigo to develop my LED lighting systems and have posted about this before.

Before we installed the lighting object the only thing I could present to the store owner were some renders I had made but these did not necessarily reflect the size of these very well. So I suggested that I create a few renders of how this would look like in his store and I created the location in Blender from architectural drawings the story owner provided and from images on their Facebook page. After the installation was complete he told me that the renders were what "sold" him

I've found BTW that these are difficult to render as it seems I cannot get the LED colors to look as saturated and intense using Indigo as they look like to the naked eye or even to a camera. These lighting systems are also a bear to capture on still photography and videographing PWM driven LED lights is even worse.

Anyway, here is first one of the renders and then two rather shabby photos of the object in its final location. These look much better when the continuous smooth color fading/blending can be observed in person.

[CTZn]

Nice story and great way of using Indigo !

[Oscar J]

Great design!

[bubs]

Delighted to see these as a real installation! Very well done sir!

[zeitmeister]

Yeah congrats!!!


Cheers, zeiti

[Tramis]

Congrats! Looks really awesome

[kklors]

Very nice!

[Polinalkrimizei]

Thanks for sharing this project from development till realisation!
It's great to atcually seeing it installed after following your renders and efforts here (it's already been years?!).

Can you make a video to actually see it in motion? Sadly it's too far from my place to watch it in person...

AND WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER APPLE STORES?!?!

[Headroom]

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

Yes, it's been 4 years from the first rough prototype - a feasibility study really - to this installation in an iStore. It's not an Apple Store but an authorized re-seller. We have an Apple Store her in green vile but it's in a mall and the store is too small for the "lord of the rings" design.

Initially I was talking with the owner of the store about a different design of which I had posted a render here before: https://trippylighting.files.wordpress. ... 064735.jpg
However, national Apple (marcom ?) representative made it clear that I cannot use the Apple logo like this. In the end this actually worked out better. As can be seen in the photos the lamp is visible far and wide from outside the store. The store faces a nice newly renovated plaza right in the center of downtown Greenville. Prime location! There is a lot of foot traffic on that plaza, two well known restaurants with the lamp in clear sight.

I've been a mechatronics engineer for 25+ years and its not new to me that it takes a long time to get something from the early ideation to a decent prototype, which is what it is right now. What has taken a lot of additional time was that I needed to re-familiarize myself with designing and building electronics after a more than 20 year hiatus. Things are a LOT easier today!
Another big task was that the last time I had written code was for my masters thesis 25 years ago in Turbo Pascal. Well, forget the Excel macros and VBA for a minute. I mean real code I had to teach myself C and C++ in order to be able to program the microcontroller that runs the thing.

When I started it was just an idea that it would be really cool to be able to remote control it from an iPhone. Now the lamp registers a Bonjour/ZeroConf service that is picked up by the remote control software without the need for further network configuration. it can also be remote controlled with an Apple IR remote that can be paired to the lamp.

I have one more mostly mechanical design phase before I am ready to ship, so to speak.

As to making a video. I's been tough already to make decent still images o the lamp. this is particularly true for the this new lamp in the iStore. the lamp I build for my own home is almost 4 years old and while I used the same LEDs they've improved through these years and are a a bit more powerful in terms of lumen output. I also chose not normal blue but a royal blue LEDs for that additional purple kick.
The colors are so saturated that the sensors in the cameras have a really hard time particularly with the blue color. Then image processing that goes on in most camera nowadays really bothers the images.

If you want to shoot video, due to the constant color fading you need to keep exposure and white point stable. Also the PWM controlled dimming interferes quite heavily with the image capturing frequent of the video camera.

My next step is actually finding a professional photographer and videographer that can help me with that.