Tangible Interaction and Macetech (makers of the Shift Bright) were part of the Olympics! They had a hand in quite a few LED installations but the coolest are these Olympic Interactive LED Globes. Macetech talks about the hurdles they had designing and building these devices, due to time constrains and part shortages they had to make some quick decisions in order to meet the deadline.
“The globes are about six feet across, translucent, filled with helium, and contain LEDs that light the sphere in different colors as they slowly bounce across a crowd. We had a solid idea how to proceed at the beginning of the project, but due to worldwide semiconductor shortages, necessary parts were dropping out of stock as fast as they were specified. Every time a part became unavailable, it caused a cascade of design changes that required changing other components, which then became unavailable…and so on. Some parts of the project were completely redesigned several times.”