Starting construction of the lighting rig. One inch diameter electrical conduit is hand bent into two concentric rings with an overall diameter of 10.5 feet
The ring parts are welded into sections so it can be transported and assembled on-site.
Electrical conduit is galvanized and welding it is nasty, toxic work (not recommended). An assembly jig helps hold the parts together while welding.
The assembled sections being test fit.
Constructing the center section. My studio is long and narrow - the ring barely fits.
Development rig for the electronics combining 24 infrared sensors, 6 AC controller boards, 3 4051 multiplexers and the Wiring board (based on the atmel 128 microcontroller ).
To work out the electronics and begin programming using AC lights, a mockup was constructed using inexpensive bulbs with hacked together wiring.
The budget for the project was tight and attempting to use the AC bulbs with soldered on/taped wires rather than actual sockets seemed like a good idea at the time... It worked for a while but was fragile and a bit dangerous.
Mess of wires - but the rig worked really well for sorting out the sensor programming.
The Sharp GP2D12 infrared sensor. There are 24 of these.
The Wiring board and one of the multiplexer custom boards. Rather than read all the sensors through one analog pin I opted for speed and wiring simplicity and broke them out into 3 sections with 8 sensors each.
Lighting cables from IKEA relaxing in the studio. It was less expensive to purchase prefab lighting cables from IKEA than to construct them from parts.
Testing the sensors.
Beginning the installation.
There was some question whether the overhead mounting points would support the weight.
Beginning to wire it all together.