We were running up to the last few days of being able to bring the panel to playa.. We kept on adding more and more rows of LEDs to the panel. We added on a second FadeCandy to the host and got to about 12 rows of LEDs... And that is where we started to run into issues..

After many months of preparing for this moment, tonight we finally have some of the LEDs mounted to the panel and are able to do some testing to make sure that things are working right..

This week we have a few friends willing to help us out so that we can speed through the final batch so that we can start putting together the side panel that we have cut out and waiting to be used..

With knowing the harsh climate at Burning Man, and knowing that nothing will ever go according to plan.. Our goal with RetorMan is to be able to make it as modular as we can so that parts can be switched out with replacements rather quickly.. Part of the plan to do this is to use weatherproof distribution boxes to split out the 8 channels of each FadeCandy.

Since the last post, we have been taking our time to cut and solder neopixel strips into segments of 60 LEDs. Each segment is 1M long. Because the FadeCandy can only support upto 64 LEDs per channel, we thought it was best to work with 5M neopixel strips, and make them into 5 segments, thus loosing 4 pixels per channel, but being able to evenly cut up the strips...

After what seems like forever with brainstorming and testing different ideas we had for RetroMan the PacMan art car concept, we are finally starting on the build of the panels. Right now the first step is cutting out the back board and building up the spacers for the defuser plastic layer.