In late 2004, the electronic dance music duo Daft Punk teamed up with Habitat (a ‘posh’ store in England) to design the Daft Punk Table. The picture below shows the original table on display at Habitat. It featured a 5×5 grid of white lights under black glass and red acrylic. The table could randomly show patterns or switch to a music-activated mode. It sold for about $2,000 (yikes!).
The images and videos of the table eventually made their way overseas. In early 2009, the idea to copy this table made its rounds in the DIY community. This was about the time I heard of it and decided that I had to have one. I found all the examples I could to get an idea of what had been done. Everyone had the table sequence through a fixed set of patterns, some displayed text, and some were able to take a line-in audio input to drive the display. All of the examples I found had simple on/off for each light.
Once I knew what had been done I came up with the following list of features for my Disco Table:
- Modern-looking black glass table about 3 ft x 3 ft
- 5×5 grid of LED-lit squares on top
- 4 LED light strips under the table (1 on each side)
- Control each square’s brightness individually with full PWM dimming
- No wires leaving the table, except power
- Microphone input to allow audio in the room to drive the display
- Frequency filtering (at least 5 frequencies) of audio to drive an equalizer-type display
- Adjustable gain to account for different music volumes
- Wireless remote to change patterns and interact with the table
- Plenty of cool patterns, effects, text, etc.
This was a pretty ambitious list, especially considering I had never built a piece of furniture before or worked with audio very much. I actually wanted this to look good in my house, not just a jumble of wires and lights, so it had to have polish. I also wanted anyone who was sober enough to pick up the remote to be able to interact with the display.
Note: Performing a search for Daft Punk Table nowadays will get you a LOT of results because it has been done many times since 2009 with many different results. I don’t claim to be the first or to be breaking any new ground, but I do believe I added several new features that added up to a very cool conversation piece.
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