How to Build a Daft Punk Table Replica

The idea is to build a replica of the Daft Punk Table sold at Habitat, very nice, but, as long as I know not sold anymore.
The building process is not very complicated, the hardest part is to decide everything when your starting point is zero. I could get some ideas about the construction of the table like the use of "carton pluma" from Mathieu, a french guy that made one before I made mine. You can see Mathieu's table at: http://www.dailymotion.com/miniDaftPunkTable
This is one picture of the table i constructed myself.
You can get more info on http://mrgalleta.wordpress.com/
You can find the sources in: http://github.com/czoido/

Ok! As many people has written me after watching the youtube videos, interested in the construction of the table, i'll write a quick'n'dirty guide excuse my English, but I'll write this very fast and English is not my native language.

So let's begin constructing the daft punk table replica. The materials i used for the table where MDF and 10mm grey. They produce an overall impression very similar to the original one, if not better. Under the glass there is a red plexiglass square and the 5x5 division are made of "carton pluma".

Its a good idea to put a sheet of difuser like thick onion paper on top of these squares so the light of the leds difusses through the red plexiglass.

The second thing I made was to buy the plexiglass, just the same dimension as the squares. These are the first tries with leds in the squares. The plexiglass still had the plastic protection.
Probably the plexiglass is one of the most expensive materials to buy (apart from the glass, of course). I think I got this piece for about 35€(I was lucky the had some cut rests I could use) in a Madrid shop.

The inner structure of the table, from wich the glass will be suspended is made in MDF in my replica. If anyone has the intention of constructing one, I would recommend a less dense wood, since MDF is extremely heavy. It was 19mm thick MDF, i think. I bought it at C/Madera in Madrid City and it was quite cheap. So after taking all these to home (the hardest part) I verified the dimensions of all the parts joining the elements with adhesive tape.

So the joints where these typical wood joints, with some screw reinforcements… Combined with wood glue they make a quiet robust joint, so the structure can support the glass weight… You have to consider that if you use 10mm glass you can get a final weight from about 40 Kg just in glass….

After this, the next is painting it in black. I used a water based paint that doesnt smell with matt appeareance. The paint is not a critical point since it wont be perceived through the glass.

Well… so I will explain briefly how I made this part… Each square has 8 red hight brightness leds inside no oriented upwards so the light difusses better. It makes 200 total leds, it’s a bit boring to solder so many leds… The control of these leds ia made with a PIC 16F876A Microcontroller. The control software is in C and I made a software in order to design the sequences. The sequences are changed via RS232 communication when I play music on Winamp I programmed a PlugIn that synchs the table with the music bpm’s… Maybe all the software stuff was one of the easiests and fastest to develope as I have long experience with the subject.

So… the PIC receives the signal via RS232 (I will make this communication via Zigbee when I get some Xbee modules) and transmits them thorugh I2C to PCF8574 that make use of the ULN28003 in order to get enough current to feed the leds…

So here are some pictures of the soldering process (It was quiet boring and the results are not very well looking, but none will see the soldered board):

Maybe one of the riskiest parts of the construction. I covered the table with grey 10mm glass. All the glass was about 180 euros with the sharp edges rounded. The original table has some parts of the glass joined with glue, i think, but as my table was becoming so heavy i wanted a system to suspend the glass so you could unmount it. I made this modifying some coat adhesive hangers and painting them in black, there are four hangers for each vertical glass i think the result was quiet good .Now there are some pictures of the table without the glass and with it:

Thanks for your attention, i hope it's useful for someone...

I recorded this video with the table connected to winamp, as you can se the table is synchronized with the music...