Location: 1:00 6200', Open Playa
Mani Padme is a 9-foot tall, 5-foot diameter cylinder with 32 vertical bars of full-color, computer-controlled LEDs around its circumference. The cylinder spins on a vertical axis, but there is no motor. It only spins when someone spins the cylinder by hand. As it spins a rotary encoder lets the computer know, 360 times per second, what angle the cylinder is. The computer choose the colors of the LEDs using this information to display a solid cylinder of light, making use of the eye's persistence-of-vision characteristic.