ZAG Bridge Lighting

This Project was submitted to Parallax by Guy Marsden

This pedestrian bridge is both outlined and has it's walkway illuminated by a fiber optic system designed by Michael Hayden. The fiber is large diameter edge dedicated material made by Lumenyte International Corp. 8 metal halide illuminators with color wheels were programmed by me to change colors in programmed sequences. The illuminators were installed at intervals along the outside of the bridge, with 4 on each side.

I designed a control system that could send serial instructions to each of the illuminators to set a specific color or to move the wheel at certain speeds. This unit is based on a Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller from Parallax Inc.

The commands are received by Basic Stamp rev. D units that have a stepper motor driver and a circuit to sense the Hall effect home sensor on the color wheel. Serial data is received by an opto isolator via the green terminal block.

Each wheel inside the illuminator has 8 colors, with home being bright yellow, and the colors progressing around the rainbow.

Here I am programming the color sequencing:

The software took several days to refine. In the images above a rainbow is showing. At other times the entire bridge can jump from one color to another, chase a rainbow along it's length, twinkle various colors at random, and many other interesting visual effects. The result is subtly hypnotic and entrancing to experience while crossing the bridge.