Changing the color of a 3D-printed acronym with Python and Raspberry Pi

A clever hack by two Digital Harbor Foundation (DHF) students was on display last week during the one-year anniversary of the Digital Harbor Tech Center.
Two DHF youth members Birendra Rai and Glory Barongozi, using Python programming language and a Raspberry Pi (a computer the size of a credit card that can be used in a variety of DIY electronics projects), came up with a way to change the color on the inside of a wired-up, 3D model of DHF, as seen below:
During Thursday night’s anniversary, as more than 150 people crammed into the Digital Harbor Tech Center in Federal Hill, any color tweeted out by someone that was also tagged #DHFcolor would automatically change the color of the 3D acronym. (The script the students wrote scraped Twitter for the hashtag, which then triggered the color-changing process.) Some colors — gold, for instance — wouldn’t work. But purple, blue and the green Technical.ly Baltimore tweeted were fair game.

The Raspberry Pi mini-computer, on the left, attached to the electrical board that changed the color of the lights.