Light-up Climbing Wall
Summer 2015
This project used a woodie (home climbing wall) that I had inherited from a friend. I wanted to convert it to a light up wall using RGB LEDs so I could set routes on it using different colors.
For any implementation, the wires and electronics need to live behind the wall. There's too much foot scraping going on the front for wiring to survive on that face. The wall itself has 3/8" T-nuts in a grid pattern that allows the holds to be tightened down via a socket head cap screw. One of the challenges of marking a hold with a light is that the holds come in different sizes, and a larger hold could potentially cover a light that is mounted close to the t-nut. Idea #1: Drill holes farther from the T-nut than any hold you want to mount. If I were to go back and do the project again, this is the way I would do it. (also its the way Ben Moon did it). But I decided to get fancy... Idea #2: Ideally, the light is emitting from the center of the hold. Have a vented screw (basically a screw with a hole drilled in it, and mount the LED to the back of the screw,. But this would require removing the LED every time I wanted to switch out a hold for a new one. So I decided to get even fancier... Idea #3: Have a compliant strip of rubber that is centered over the back of the T-nut. Then as the screw pushes back behind the wall, the LED can move with it. See the image on the left. |
Implementation
I made a chain of 50 LEDs using cheap 4 wire connector harnesses I found on ebay.
The trick to getting the rubber sheet to work was installing a grommet in the sheet to give the rotating screw head a bearing surface. To fixture the LED to this grommet, I came up with a way of cutting a 1/8" diameter heat shrink and shrinking down around the wires. See the image on the right. |
Pictures
Code
Detailed description of code to come. Here is the github link