Living Pixels is a Smart Light Frame That Comes Alive in the Absence of Humans

“What if smart devices actually did have personalities and emotions
that we as humans don’t ever see?”

First-year student Zekun Yang’s Living Pixels light frame was recently featured on the Arduino Blog. The article opens with, “As smart devices become more ingrained in our everyday lives, it’s perhaps only natural that we start to think of them as living things. What if such gadgets actually did have personalities and emotions that we as humans don’t ever see?”

Zekun’s Living Pixels project illustrates this idea in luminescent style, as a picture frame that shows a static pattern of lights when anyone is nearby. When people aren’t present, and the device is left alone, it displays a range of emotions on its 16×16 LED matrix—from sleepy, relaxed, and even angry.

“We like to endow smart products with human names (like Alexa and Siri), but we rarely treat them with dignity as living beings,” Zekun says of her inspiration for the project. “Imagining a world where technology has life, I built a picture frame that shows emotion when people leave the room.”

Zekun learned circuit building and coding while taking the first semester course, Making Studio, taught by Becky Stern. Living Pixels uses a passive infrared sensor to pick up on nearby human activity, while an Arduino Uno is implemented for control.

For details on how to build your own Living Pixels smart frame, check out Zekun’s Instructables.com project page.