The brains of Optic Flow begin with an Arduino Uno and the custom-built circuit.

The Arduino can only switch its microprocessor pins on or off, at a low 5 volts. That’s not enough to control all the components of Optic Flow, like the ten motors. The artist designed and built a custom electronic circuit that takes the low-voltage signals from the Arduino and does something useful with them.

The major elements of the circuit include:

An internal network called an “I2C serial bus” to communicate to the light pendants, real time clock and LCD display.

Rotary encoder to allow the user to select “mood” programs to run.

Isolated electrical circuit that provides a high-power electrical current for the ten motors, and which won’t damage the other components. This isolated circuit uses “H-Bridge” chips. These are dedicated chips that can turn on-or-off each motor individually, and reverse the direction of the motor.

A bank of daisy-chained “shift registers.” These are chips that expand the number of other components or devices that the Arduino can control