Mario Mauerer and Lukas Schrittwieser sent in the project that has been created in the student lab over the past 1.5 years. It is a huge interactive LED disco floor which consists of 640 RGB LEDs.

“The cool thing is that each tile can detect if somebody is standing on it or
not! This information is process10 square meter ed by a Java program that allows us to write
various party-games or crazy animations on the floor. The tiles use a capacitive
method to detect the presence of someone. (RC-oscillator)

The Dancefloor includes 640 RGB LEDs, 8 AVRs, 8 CPLDs, more than 1km of wiring,
more than 10000 hand-soldered points, one FPGA and one embedded PC. The
FPGA-Board and the Embedded PC as well as the power supply have been crammed
into an Apple G5-case we’ve found on the junkyard.

The thing has been at many parties so far and it seems to be pretty robust,
beer-tight and everybody seems to love it. “