Inspired by the display at Changi Airport - Singapore, This was a team effort for developing a similar display with feedback controlled normal DC motors with controllers in Microcontrollers (3 motors per MCU), which in turn are controlled over RS485 and Modbus by a central computer with a Web Interface to setup and control the animation.
Configuration software
First it starts with moving the balls to required position(can use the depth control on right side of the screen to move balls which are behind). A timeline is shown on the bottom. Key-frames can be added to the timeline which leads to animating the whole artwork. Finally there is a button for going live or Generating code to be deployed to a controller on site, to run the animation in loop.