Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

The world's largest selfie machine

By Andrew Gregory. Posted

This is As We Are, a 14-foot tall interactive sculpture imagined by Matthew Mohr and built by DCL, a Boston-based company, specialising in fabricating really cool things.

During the day, the sculpture faces into the atrium. At night, it rotates to face outward to the street

It’s built out of layers of contoured aluminium, covered in custom SANSI LED modules, comprising 850 000 individual LEDs. In the back of the head there’s a photo booth, with 32 Raspberry Pis and Camera Modules, controlled by custom facial recognition software that finds your face, flattens it, and maps it onto the LEDs on the exterior of the sculpture, making your face twice as high as André the Giant.

As We Are is located in the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio; it was inspired when Matthew wanted a project to show off the diversity of the city.

Every subject in As We Are is also a participant – this is really public art

Each of the circular mounts holds a Raspberry Pi and a Pi Camera Module

This struck us as a brilliant project for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s a giant version of the Frank Sidebottom head. The second is that, at its heart, it’s just some Raspberry Pis, Camera Modules and LED screens, meaning that it should be possible to make one of these yourself (OK, a much smaller, lower resolution one, but technically similar). Go forth and give it a go.

hsmag.cc/eYjPdW

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