WiFi VIP Tables

Temple SF needed 32 illuminated VIP tables, but buying new plastic during the pandemic was too expensive. We had a stack of old ones, but the heavy MDF bases had spent years soaking up spilled drinks. The black acrylic tops were chipped into sharp points, and the hardwired wash strips were dead. The acrylic itself was still good, so we stripped them down to rebuild them.

My carpenter and I routed the acrylic channels deeper for new LED strips and cut a center path for the wiring. We rounded off the sharp edges across all 32 sheets. To replace the ruined MDF, we cut plywood bases, painted them black, and bolted on metal legs. Time got tight, and my 3D printer could not produce enclosures fast enough. I grabbed a stack of plastic soup containers from the kitchen and siliconed them to the underside of each table. They housed an ESP32 decoder and a lithium-ion battery, keeping the electronics safe from spills.

The operator gathered the batteries at the end of the night to charge them at the control rack. I mapped the tables into Madrix over wireless ArtNet. Running Wi-Fi through a crowded club is a fight against RF noise, but high-gain antennas kept the signal alive. I would have chosen legs with a wider base, since the tables could tip if someone leaned hard on the edge. But they salvaged our most expensive material and survived the crowd.