The 2nd Final Push

Here it is after the 2nd Final Push and it's still not quite finished. Even if it's not, it looks way better that what I pictured in my head. Today,  all the islands for one hemisphere were soldered and mounted and the AC port was mounted in the base.

Lining Up Latitude and Longitude

It's actually starting to look like a globe or half globe. On the stand, The globe measures 5 feet 7 inches tall. Today, my dad and I started mounting the continents to the globe. It's looking more like Earth by the minute.

Other than the occasional backwards LED, the only problem we've encountered has been that the continents are too small for the sphere. They were printed for 2 foot radius curve not a 2 foot 1/2 inch curve as it actually should be for mounting compensation. Luckily, the difference is small enough that with some tweaking, it should go unnoticed.

Islands are also proving troublesome.

It's Coming Together!

This weekend was all Personal Project work. The globe was far from complete. The stand had to be constructed, continents glued, and South America and Africa were the only continents with LEDs on them.

Within 48 hours, all the continents had their LEDs mounted and soldered. North America and Europe were especially challenging due to the high density of LEDs.

The stand was built and painted black. The Hexagonal shape pairs nicely with the 4' sphere.

It's Coming Together! I just need to mount the continents to the globe, the electronics to the base, and wire it all up before Thursday.

Mann Clan Assembly Line

The African Continent was an entirely new challenge. The amount of LEDs dwarfed those on South America. I started drilling the holes monday and gluing the pixels tuesday but after wiring up the first two pixels, I realized that it was going to take me weeks to finish this project.

There were so many pixels and so little time. I thought about a self-feeding soldering iron but my mom said the earliest it would arrive is in a week. I needed a small workforce. Queue the Mann Clan Assembly Service (My Dad, Mom, and Brother). With multiple people we were able to complete the entire African Continent within an afternoon.

My South American Grid

It Works! Today, I finished adding LEDs continent of South America. I quickly wired them up and uploaded the code. Look how they glow!

I lied when I said, "I quickly wired them up." It took a great many hours to drill out the holes, hot glue each pixel, and solder wires to each of the 6 pads on every pixel. It was tedious and included only a small portion of the 284 pixels going on my globe.

At least it works and it looks great.

The Cities of Lights

Above is one of my first tests cities. I drilled a hole into the PVC sheet with a step drill bit and glued a pixel in with hot glue. I ran the Adafruit strandtest example and watched the light show. The hot glue gave the LEDs a nice diffused effect.

After that, I started working on the code for both microcontrollers.

Around the World in 48 Hours

Over the past few days, I've been working on maps and continents. I started with mapping out the locations of all my little pixels. I started with country capitals and then moved to US state capitals, Canadian provinces, and a few regions of Mexico and China. After placing my dots, I added lines to represent my wiring path. I put it all into a spreadsheet starting with the first pixel in the chain. I ended up with 284 pixel locations.

The next problem was getting the country cutouts to wrap around the frame. I bought foamed PVC sheeting from Monterey Signs. It's very flexible and can be warped with heat. Even then, the sheet did not curve to the sphere well. I then searched around and found an application from NASA that allowed me to make a Sinusoidal Projection with 15 degree gores.

Now it has to be cut out.