CSE237D Hayden Gomes
1
Project Progress Report
Application for Interactive LED Visualization
Hayden Gomes
CSE 237D
Background
The University of California, San Diego’s (UCSD) Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)
department building was constructed in 2005. The architects who designed this state-of-the-art
teaching and research facility designed the building with a unique look and feel. Along these
lines, they designed the floor plan of the building to be shaped like a foot. In the “big toe” of
the building, the architects included tri-color LED fixtures. These iColor Cove fixtures, usually
found in theater lighting systems and clubs, are the first model in a successful line of lights by
Color Kinetics. With seventy fixtures lining the large windows on each floor of the big toe, these
LEDs are able to fill the room with colorful ambient light.
Each fixture can be independently set to one of 16.7 million additive RGB colors through DMX-
512 signaling protocol. However, since the building was completed access to these fixtures has
been limited to a panel on each floor that can execute up to eight preprogrammed light shows.
Also, because the big toe rooms have restricted access and the LEDs are most observable at
night, there is little opportunity for students to use them.
During the fall of 2009 I worked with Catherine Wah and Emmett McQuinn on a group project
for our compilers class (CSE231). The project goals were to develop a simple language for
programming light shows and the software for compiling the language and displaying the results
in a simulator or on the LED fixtures in the big toe. The project concluded with a successful
demonstration of programs developed in our language being compiled and displayed on one
floor of the big toe.
Project Goal
The goal of this project is to develop a method for students to remotely control the big toe
LEDs, increasing their overall accessibility and mindshare. This will be done by building on the
compilers project from the fall quarter. I will create an application for Google’s Android OS that
will allow users to write programs in our language and then send them to a web server that will
compile and execute the programs, displaying them on the big toe fixtures. Additionally, if this
goal is completed in a timely fashion, the application will be expanded to include a method of
manually controlling the fixtures and a simulator to allow users to view a visualization of their
program before submitting it to the server.