Hey HN, this was my first art installation and boy was it a whopper. Used by tens of thousands of people in 8 days, it had 40 hand-made pulse sensors, 200 high current LEDs, and 40 5 meter LED strips. All running off an ATmega328p chip.

Would love to answer any questions on building art installations.

That's a really lovely idea. Congratulations on pulling off your vision.

It's awesome to see how much work went into it. When you're wondering around the playa it's easy to get lost in all the wonderful things going on and not take the time to step back and think about how much work goes into each individual installation.

Every time I see a clip from Burning Man I long to go back there again (I'm in the UK, so it's not so easy). It's surely one of the greatest sensory displays of hackers crafting wonderful work on the planet.

I'm interested in biofeedback. And it saddens me that ecg sensors aren't out there for people who aren't electrical engineers (or with equivalent non-formal knowledge in this topic). Neurosky reportedly has one in the works (but probably also 50-100$).

The problem with most heartbeat sensors is that they only give you a frequency. They don't tell you when the heartbeats arrive, or, god forbit, anything interesting about the actual signal.

Here's an actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fucQFf7Txws (surprised to see there wasn't a video on OP's page)

This is awesome. I just completed a simple first foray into attaching circuits and LEDs to one of my welding projects, and seeing a walkthrough of the steps that I also had to figure out (culminating in an impressive large-scale installation!) is fascinating. Thank you so much!

edit Btw, also amazing that you were willing to lug the battery back to camp and recharge it via solar power. So many installations out there are marred by the grating sound of a generator in the background.

Any issues with the alkaline dust causing issues with the electronics?