Festival Hype Stick
WTF is a ‘Hype Stick’?
A ‘Hype Stick’ is what I call the large decorative poles that now plague music festivals. They were originally, and are still primarily used to locate friends in a crowd of thousands of people that typically has no phone reception. In an effort to be easily identifiable in a large crowd, the designs are increasingly creative. This creativity has a spawned an unofficial competition for the funniest or most creative designs and they rarely disappoint. I’ve also found they’re a great way to hype up the crowd as you thrust the stick vigourosly along to the music, hence the name.
How I Made It
Borne from my interpretation of the definition of a ‘Hype stick’, I wanted to create something that would be easy to spot in a crowd and would be a portable party on a pole. My concept was the disco stick - a rotating disco ball on top of a pole, with music synchronised LEDs illuminating the ball and crowd below.
A majority of the Hype Stick was 3D printed with off the shelf components bought as cheaply as possible. Below the stick is shown in it’s various components before assembly. The entirety of the design can be disassembled non-destructively in anticipation of the need to make field repairs.
The stick is powered by a 5Ah 11.1V LiPo hobby battery providing an estimated 8hrs continuous use at the maximum 7.2W consumption the LEDs. In practice I didn’t end up changing the battery at all during the festival.
The ball itself was an Icosahedron created in Blender split into three parts for printing and covered in a mirror tape to get the reflective finish.
You can see the LEDs responding to the music but the overall effect turned out to be quite subtle against the intensity of the stage lighting. Not entirely a bad thing as the stick should really have the least detrimental impact on other festival goers enjoyment.
It Never Goes According To Plan…
With the festival scheduled for New Years Eve, I was flat out preparing for Christmas and finishing up at work for the year, so many parts of the design were left to the last minute. The rotating disco ball assembly design didn’t really work, and I fried the motor because of the resistance so the ball didn’t actually rotate in the end. It was also extremely difficult to stuff the cables into the tiny cavities and seal it back up which is a lesson for next time.
On the plus side it was really robust and the only damage was to the conduit itself; surviving what is effectively a 3 day bender is no mean feat. I received quite a few complements and have some inspiration for next year too…
Relishing in the moment.
