I tried as much as possible to minimize the cost of the materials and the effort put into practical realization, which I often do because I do not like to reinvent the wheel. My opinion is that it is much faster and easier when we can call on local craftsmen who know their profession and I cannot have (in my apartment) a glass workshop, a carpentry workshop, a locksmith workshop anyway. 😊

I did not build the table because I wanted, as I said before, to make my work easier, so I ordered the coffee table online (I really like to improve the products I buy). So I chose a simple, modern, elegant with a glass top of course. From the pictures I deduced that it will have the transparent smoked glass top but after a month and a half (!) of waiting, when I received it I had the big surprise that the top was not transparent but it was a black painted glass, completely opaque. That's why I needed to make another board, I used in the end a piece of real smoked glass as you will see below).

You can see the table model I ordered for example here - or here.

I ordered it from here from an online retailer for Home and Lifestyle in Central and Eastern Europe -

Other model that I think might be interesting, also this model would really be worth making from copper pipes for example, I'm sure that with the two LED matrices it would look awesome 😊

I ordered the smoked plexiglass sheet online , it is 5mm thick.

I ordered the smoked glass in a local workshop, it is 6mm thick and it is also tempered.

I ordered the MDF board and the slats also in a local workshop.

The main tools I used:

The MATRIX… the LED Matrix 😊

In The Beauty of Math instructable I used 4 arrays of 8x8 LEDs, ie a matrix of 16x16 LEDs. I thought I should use such matrices for this project also. As the table has an active surface of 460mmx460mm the matrix could have 36 matrices of 8x8 ie 48x48 (2304) leds. That could be made but ... the cost of the cheapest 8x8 LED module would be $5.2 so in total $187!

Other two interesting variants would be the ones with 32x32 (1024) LEDs and the one with 24x26 + 25x25 (1249) LEDs. These can be made from much cheaper LED strips those one with 60leds/m, (one LED price will be 14.24/300 = $0.05 - the price is lower at 5m strips, the remaining LEDs could be used for other projects) -

So the first one would cost $51 and the second one would be $ 62. You can see that the price is much lower than the 8x8 module version, even if the number of LEDs is only half.

It is true that the price is lower than the variant with 8x8 LED modules but the parts would be difficult to solder and their command could be quite complicated.

I also read this article - "Diffusing LEDs Right" - where the author recommends that for a good diffusion of the LED lights the distance between the LEDs and the diffusion surface should be at least equal to or greater than the distance between the LEDs. The frame of the coffee table I ordered allows a distance of 20 mm between the LEDs and the diffusion surface (table top). The above mentioned article focuses on the more uniform diffusion of the LED light, which was not really necessary in my project, I wanted to see each LED individually as a cell, only a little bit blurred.

Considering this aspect I decided that it would be best to try the simplest (and cheapest) 25x25 (625) LED version. It would only cost $31. Also, the soldering is easy to make.

I attached (at files section) )the jpg and svg files of the different variants of arrangement of the analyzed LEDs matrixes.

Electronics

The heart of the electronic part is a Wemos D1 mini module that is based on the ESP8266 microcontroller. Information about this module can be found on the wemos website and in the instructable "Wemos ESP8266 Getting Started Guide With Arduino IDE"

Why this module? It has more digital outputs (I needed 5), no need for power + programming eletronics only a microUSB cable and last but not least, it works perfectly with the Arduino IDE.

The electronic scheme I attached in the files section.

A note. Please pay attention to the S1 switch in the diagram. This allows the power supply of the Wemos D1 mini to be switched off when programming ie when the microUSB cable is present. Without this switch the 5v line from the source and the 5v line from the USB cable being connected could cause the fail of the USB port of the computer, power supply failing or electronic module to fail. When we finish programming, we remove the microUSB cable, we change the position of the switch so that the module is powered from the external 5v source.

I installed the Wemos electronic module in an AAA battery holder and I used the support's switch as mentioned above.

In order to display the different luminous effects, I adapted the program from my article - The Beauty of Math - Conway's Game of Life Art - and the framework program that I successfully used to design the - VERBIS - Desktop 8x8 RGB LED Matrix Word Clock - and the - Soothe&Refresh Smart Lamp - and uploaded it to github - here

I will not insist on the functioning of the program because I described everything in my previously mentioned projects, I would draw attention only to the page where the game ( not only Conway's Game of Life Rules) can be chosen (screenshot above) with the rules that I borrowed from the page - Cellular Automata rules lexicon - and also a few initial variables - density and fading step. You can play with these values to get particularly beautiful effects.