Projects

React, TypeScript, NextJS, Tailwind CSS, and GitHub Actions for CI/CD

The website you are on is my personal portfolio site. It is designed to be easy to maintain and update, with a focus on performance and accessibility, and meant to showcase my work and projects.

I challenged myself to build and polish it as a 1-bit (2 colors) experience, though you may notice a few more colors for polish, like a chromatic aberration effect on hover, or use of opacity to achieve the scanline and flicker effects.

Python, Beaglebones, Mac Minis, JavaScript/HTML/CSS, ProcessingJS (for 3D visualization)

Flying over downtown Pittsburgh at night reveals a brilliant wash of color along the Ohio River that emanates from an Iontank installation inside the Rivers Casino complex. The Drum Bar lighting feature is the focal point of the Rivers Casino and it stands over 80 feet tall. Before the Rivers commissioned Iontank for an evaluation and overhaul, the original Drum Bar system was running off aging electronics and was in dire need of an upgrade. Iontank replaced the entire heart of the sculpture, providing all new LED lights, electronics and custom software designed and written from the ground up.

The Drum Bar installation now runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week displaying light shows and video content across all 74,220 LEDs. 43 networked microcomputers dispatch synchronized content at a consistent 30 frames per second and integrated monitoring tracks the status of the entire system. Iontank even designed a palette of custom light shows, animated compositions and videos including ones for special events and major holidays. The Drum Bar installation has successfully been given a really, really bright new life.

Java, 56 synchronized Android Devices, Google Assistant API, Mac Mini, LEDs, and more

The Google Digital Campfire is an interactive art-object designed to evoke the feeling of sharing stories with friends around a glowing fire. Today, Google hosts conversations with their clients around Digital Campfires in multiple cities around the world. It can be controlled with simple voice commands like “show me images of Pittsburgh” or “let's get back to work”. These commands seamlessly transition the Campfire through various states while the client is presenting.

Some of the main technical challenges were synchronizing video feeds on 56 Android devices, creating a custom voice interface with Google Assistant, creating choreographed animations, distributing image search results across devices, and creating a custom software suite to control the entire system.

C++, OpenFrameworks, Octrees, 3D grid of LEDs

A 3D grid of LEDs suspended in space light up as a 3D particle simulation of fireworks collides with them. This simulation takes advantage of Octrees to efficiently identify which LEDs should be lit up to make a firework effect.

Made for a temporary installation.