Elovalo is a 3D Light display mounted on a monolithic pedestal. It can display 8x8x8 voxel effects on a truly three-dimensional surface. The pedestal contains mounting slots for external sensors that can be used to affect all effects easily. Elovalo has been designed to be a very flexible when it comes to feeding power. A standard Elovalo cube can run on either any AC outlet or a standard car battery, and has been tested to withstand outside mounting.

The lighting system was originally installed at Jyväskylä's central Church Park in Fall 2012 for ten days. It consisted of three lighting pedestals that housed a red, green and blue 3D display. These low-resolution light displays played various effects that were influenced by ambient conditions, such as sound, light and proximity.

Elovalo is a custom design when compared to other LED cube projects. We came up with our own hardware, software and physical packaging. The elovalo software and electronic schematics are Free and Open Source. The development kit includes a Blender based simulation tool that may be used to preview effects before actually uploading them on the device. This is just one of those facets that makes our offering unique compared to others.

Elovalo is a joint project between Hacklab JKL, Koodilehto Co-op, and IhmeMedia. Financing, aesthetic support and mentoring in the initial state have been provided by Live Herring.

Hardware

• Processor: ATmega328p 2KiB SRAM 32KiB FLASH @ 16MHz
• Sensors: proximity, ambient sound, ambient Light.
• Media: 8x8x8 voxel 512 LED 3D matrix with 12 bit grayscale.
• Communication: 5V UART bidirectional serial communications protocol for debugging and sending/receiving data to and from the processor.

Software

• Effects simulator implemented with Blender3d allows us to develop effects without actual hardware , allowing to develop real time effects without the Elovalo hardware.
• User interface which provides more user friendly view to the binary protocol used in UART communication.

Firmware

• Fully custom and bottom-up designed firmware that is extremely efficiently optimized to squeeze all the juice out of the 8 bit processor.
• 768 byte double buffered display buffer that guarantees a stable and smooth interface for animating without pacing issues.
• Buffered UART communications.
• Multitasking with interrupts and hardware peripheral modules.
• SLEEP and HIBERNATE modes with remote starting.
• Real time clock with scheduling (for timed turning on).

Pedestal

• Height without cube: 78cm
• Height with cube: 132cm
• Width: 33.5cm
• Depth: 33.5cm
• Mountable on steel feet
• Can house a standard car battery inside
• Painted wood with darkened acrylic glass

• Joni Katajamäki – Embedded programming, hardware design
• Jukka Kinnunen – Hardware design and debugging
• Joel Lehtonen – Embedded programming, effect engine programming
• Lasse Saari – Management, pedestal fabrication
• Marko Silokunnas – Soldering
• Mio Taalas – LED driver interface design, PCB design, embedded programming
• Ilkka Turunen – Management, soldering, pedestal tests and aesthetic design
• Juho Vepsäläinen – 3D simulator, effect programming, pedestal design

We use GPLv3 for software and firmware. CC BY-SA 3.0 is used for hardware and accompanying documentation. See LICENSE files for more details. If you are looking for other licensing options, please contact us by email elovalo@koodilehto.fi.

If you happen to be interested in Elovalo, please contact us. We are open to suggestions. The devices are available for rent. We are willing to co-operate in other ways too.