This amazing interactive motorised chandelier

My brother Mike makes a lot of crazy things in his basement workshop. The latest is something he named the Tentalux – an animated chandelier with six whirling tentacles of directed light. It’s part of a new partnership called Atelier Automatik he started to custom-build interactive furniture.

1/ The Tentalux weighs about 20 kgs. The arms and centre skeleton frame are welded steel, the vertebrae are aluminium and the sinews are stainless-steel cables and electric wire – in red and blue like arteries and veins. 2/ The Tentalux is controlled by tablet, smartphone, or computer. A recent addition allows it to be voice-controlled using the Amazon Echo (“Alexa, ask Tentalux to dance”). 3/ To orient the tentacles in a particular way, first you must position them using a smart device. That position is saved as a “pose”, which the Tentalux will then be able to re-create from memory. 4/ Five microprocessors – three to control motion, one for dimming, and one that serves as the brain, which controls the vision system. 5/ The brain is a Raspberry Pi 3 running open computer vision. A camera mounted in the centre of the six tentacles allows the brain to track simple objects such as plates or centerpieces and assign the arms of the lamp to follow them with light. 6/ To limit the noise the arms make during movement, the servos were custommade using wormgear motors and Hall-effect position sensors. This also allows the arms to retain their position when the fixture is turned off.

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