Polychrome

Blinkenlights Polychrome light and sound installation in Mildenberg, Germany, 2023

Contributing Content

There are several ways to contribute to polychrome.

1. Submit an animation in the WebP format with the dimensions 242x8. WebP animations go into octopus/priv/webp.
2. Write an application in elixir to generate dynamic content. See our example app.
3. Write a standalone program that sends Protobuf packets over UDP. See our protobuf schema.

Please send us pull requests!

Components

Name	Description	Documentation
octopus	Central hub for the project. Manages apps, mixes pixel streams, shows previews.	Readme
protobuf	Protobuf schema files for the data packets	schema.proto
blinkenleds	ESP32 firmware that drives the LED panels	Readme
calibration	Tooling to create color calibration tables for the Leds	Readme
beak	Audio engine that drives the sound output	Readme

Architecture

Protobuf is used everywhere as the wire format. All messages are wrapped in the Packet message to ensure save decoding. See the schema for more details.

Data flow for pixel and sound outputs

flowchart LR
  external_1[External Source] --> |UDP| udp_server_1
  external_2[External Source] --> |UDP| udp_server_2

  subgraph Octopus

  udp_server_1["Octopus.UDPServer [Port 2342]"] --> mixer
  udp_server_2["Octopus.UDPServer [Port 2343]"] --> mixer

  app_1[Octopus.Apps.Foo] --> mixer
  app_2[Octopus.Apps.Baa] --> mixer

  mixer["Octopus.Mixer"]-->broadcast[Octopus.Broadcaster]
  mixer --> |pubsub| manager[OctobusWeb.ManagerLive]

  end

  subgraph "Blinkenled panel (10x)"
  broadcast-->|UDP Broadcast|esp32[ESP32]
  esp32-->LEDS
  end

  broadcast --> |UDP Broadcast| sim
  sim[Simulator]-->|live_view| live[HTML]

  subgraph "Beak (sound)"
  broadcast --> |UDP Broadcast| beak
  beak--> Speakers
  end

Data flow for input events

---
title: "Input events"
---
flowchart LR

  controllers --> |UDP| input_adapter

  subgraph Octopus

  input_adapter[Octopus.InputAdapter] --> mixer["Octopus.Mixer"]
  manager[OctobusWeb.ManagerLive] --> mixer


  mixer --> udp_server_1["Octopus.UDPServer [Port 2342]"]
  mixer --> udp_server_2["Octopus.UDPServer [Port 2343]"]
  mixer --> app_1[Octopus.Apps.Foo]
  mixer --> app_2[Octopus.Apps.Baa]

  end

  udp_server_1 --> |UDP| external_1[External Source]
  udp_server_2 --> |UDP| external_2[External Source]