🛠️ faux campfire
For the Clojure Camp booth at Conj 2025, I made a fake campfire to fit in with our camping theme.
At our previous conj, Epidiah - who's run his fair share of conference booths - suggested we try a little harder for 2025, and make our booth into a "campsite." While trying to find a fake campfire to buy, I chose to try and make it instead.
I recruited Kim, who made the logs and rocks, and Canna, who helped with base-coats and soldering (so much soldering).
Most of it was made in Toronto, then packed up in a suitcase, rebuilt for the conference, and now it's packed away in a shed until next year.
Also a shout-out to Mark for donating a much better fan to liven up the flames.
The campfire is made from:
- pool noodles, tissue paper, glue, and paint (for the logs)
- spray foam, tissue paper, glue and paint (for the rocks)
- foam-board for the base
- pool noodles and paint (for the charred logs)
- a strip of individually addressable LEDs, cut-up and rewired, controlled by an ESP32 microcontroller running WLED (plugged into a USB power bank)
- a computer fan and coloured cellophane for the flickering flames (also plugged into the power bank)
Fun fact, the flames respond to the noise level in the room:
More Photos of the Final Product
WIP
Kim found a charred wood concept on the internet and it turned out awesome.
The strip of 60 LEDs was cut (mostly into single LEDs), that were then positioned and rewired, with some connectors to make it possible to disassemble easily.
Once I started using the right sized soldering tip, and Canna make a tape-based jig, things went breezy. LEDs were attached to foamboard backing to prevent the soldering joints from breaking.
The rocks were attached to the base so that they would hold the logs in place. Originally we hot-glued the rocks, but several broke off during transport, so we switched to Dual-Lock tape.
