Sphere (Las Vegas) Robotic Sun Shade Control System
Remote-controlled robotic sun shades protecting IR/visible camera systems for Sphere (Las Vegas)
Built the embedded control and remote-operations stack for Sphere (Las Vegas) robotic sun shades used to protect sensitive visible + infrared camera hardware during deployments. Delivered both sides of the system: ZeroMQ pub/sub for remote command + telemetry (Boston ↔ Las Vegas) and Arduino firmware that drives per-shade actuation, sensor reads, scheduling logic, and fail-safes. Work was completed in collaboration with the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Galileo Project team supporting the deployment.
Implemented ZeroMQ pub/sub for remote command + telemetry (Boston ↔ Las Vegas)
Arduino firmware controlling 8 motorized shades with a simple command protocol
Autonomous scheduling with NTP time sync + luminosity/environment sensing
Hands-on hardware integration: wiring, sensors, actuation, and safety fail-safes
Deployed on the array at the Sphere
This is the shade unit installed out on the array at the Sphere in Las Vegas. The whole job was protecting sensitive visible + infrared camera hardware during deployments, so the mechanism had to actuate reliably in the open, in real weather, far from anyone who could babysit it.
Firmware + hardware, by hand
Up close on the hardware. I wired the actuation, sensors, and safety cutoffs and wrote the Arduino firmware that drives each motorized shade through a simple command protocol — eight shades behind one consistent interface.
Built and bench-tested at the CfA
Back at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, integrating the system with the Galileo Project team before it ever shipped to Nevada. This is where most of the real debugging happened.
Two people and a long bug list
With my teammate during integration. A lot of this project was two people, a bench, and a running list of “why did it just do that” — then chasing each one down until it stopped.
The full remote-ops system
The complete assembly. Remote command and telemetry ran over ZeroMQ pub/sub between Boston and Las Vegas, with NTP-synced autonomous scheduling and luminosity sensing so the shades could decide for themselves when to move.
Want the full story?
Happy to talk through any of the engineering decisions, trade-offs, or what broke along the way.