Playball

Playball is an installation we developed for the LLUM light festival in Barcelona. It consists of 64 balls suspended in the air. Each ball is an independent module with full wireless connectivity, sound-triggered collision detection and LED lights.

As one ball hits another, light is passed on, revealing the playful nature of the installation.

All the balls are connected to a Node.js server, with a web interface for making custom animations or watching which ball is active at any given moment. We chose MQTT as the communication protocol because it is very lightweight and offers quality of service to ensure packet delivery.