A question that pops up now and then is how to create an installation containing lots of motors, which can be coordinated to create an artistic display, aka kinetic art. A typical example :
I have seen several questions on the subject, but no examples that demonstrate a solution. The engineer in me asks "what is the most cost effective solution?" and "How can we make a solution available to artists without much training in motor control?"
For the sake of discussion, the BMW installation can be used. For this case, I would probably use multiple stepper motors, with a home switch. The question then is whether to use one big controller with loads of IOs, with all the motor drivers operating as slaves, or a more distributed system where the main controller communicates over a network and slaved controllers control a small cluster of motors.
Ultimately I would like to create PCBs for controller and slaves, which could be used as modular building blocks for an installation.