Bitbanger Labs' Pixelstick Steps Up The Art Of Light Painting

Pixelstick, a stick of colored LEDs that paints highly complex and artistic light paintings onto long-exposure digital photographs, has completely blown away its Kickstarter goal four days into its 45-day campaign. Launched Oct. 29, the campaign funds the mass production and sale of the tool. The first Pixelsticks are projected to ship May 2014.

By holding one end of a Pixelstick and moving it in front of a digital camera on long-exposure mode, you can paint anything from abstract designs to pre-loaded designs created in any image editing program, seemingly onto thin air when the photo renders. The on-board PCB reads an SD card supplied by you to load the image or light pattern. A controller attached above the handle controls the image selection and Pixelstick behavior.

The technology is an enhancement of digital light painting, which photographers discovered not long after the advent of film photography itself. "In 1889, artist Georges Demeny created the first known light painting photograph, 'Pathological Walk From in Front', by attaching incandescent bulbs to his assistant's clothing and taking a long exposure," notes the Pixelstick Kickstarter page.

The company behind Pixelstick, Bitbanger Labs, is Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan. The two product designers are also responsible for the Remee project, the lucid dream-inducing sleeping mask that attracted more than half a million dollars over its $35,000 crowdfunding goal last year.

SOURCE: Pixelstick

VIA: TechCrunch