this post is to announce the release of another new underscores product – the artnet_led_mapper – an open-source cross-platform application for creating addressable led installations
its the second software app we have released (after the similar tv_wall_mapper earlier this month) and the final in a series of open-source tools for video installation work based on my own art practice from the last year
project overview
artnet_led_mapper is software designed to help you to map arbitrary video onto an addressable led strip canvas – in this example (from the project demo video) i have arranged the leds into a low resolution led wall:
but you can map your video source on to any number of creative and abstract stage designs as shown here from the lateral movement club nights that inspired this project:
the software takes a video source (you can use webcams or external capture cards or video sent over NDI) and uses your user defined mapping to output art-net – a network dmx lighting protocol. this is combined with a hardware led controller to control the array of led pixels.
we recommend using our open-source hardware solution the lateral_led_controller although this software should work with any art-net compatible controllers
watch the full video where i demonstrate setting up the mapping for the led wall example:
background and motivation
as mentioned above this project was inspired by the installation work i did with lateral movement – a semi-irregular club night showcasing left-field & experimental dance music and light – you can find out more about the background to this in the artist talk i gave on it WORKS IN PROGRESS 04:
we ended up using touch designer to create the custom patches for this installation since my collaborators had a bit of experience in this. it worked well but was quite complex. also i needed to borrow their windows laptop to test the hardware on since i couldnt run it on my linux computer.
at this point i was already building a similar single purpose mapping application for tv wall installations and thought it could be worth forking that to do the same thing for led installations
resolume is also capable of outputting artnet for these kind of led installations. i will repeat the exact same points that i listed on the tv_wall_mapper blog post as to why i was motivated to create this alternative solution (since they all still apply to this app also)
we are happy to provide another light-weight, open source and cross-platform alternative to making video-art installations and exploring new ways to work with video and light!
same as the tv_wall_mapper this app is open source and available to compile yourself for free – you can also make a sliding scale donation (between 10-100euros) to support this work and gain access to pre-compiled versions that should run out of the box!