Morgan Broacha, Sujay Kotwal, Alex Reed, Victoria Yong
Concept
Our team aimed to create an interactive installation that emphasized the uniqueness of winter in Pittsburgh. As the holidays were coming up, it would be a nice touch to promote a local charity and encourage people to donate to a cause. Since Arsenal Bank is a vacant building that receives plenty of foot traffic during the weekend, we wanted our installation to draw attention to this blank slate of a property. Therefore, we took inspiration from Pittsburgh’s enthusiasm for its local hockey team, the Penguins, and came up with different ideas for a small hockey-like game that could be integrated into the existing architecture and would allow people to donate to charity.
Refining the Concept
At first, we had planned to use a stepper motor to power small penguin toys to move around a space between the small windows on Arsenal Bank below the pavement. These penguins would perform and play a hockey game with a coin between the windows, which represented hockey goals. Once a coin reached a goal, the space would light up with vibrantly colored LEDs to signify a reward. The representation of our concept changed due to the movement of penguins being too complex. This led us to design a vertically mounted clear screen with a transparent track to drop a coin through. This screen would be painted to resemble a hockey rink and fit perfectly between the windows of Arsenal Bank so that it would appear as though a hockey rink were incorporated into the facade. The two highlighted parts of the drawing represent two tracks in which a coin could be dropped. Once a coin reached the end of the track and triggered the IR sensors, the space would festively light up in multiple colors. Each of the four paths a coin could take call a different lighting effect.
Fabrication
In order to create a large clear screen, several large notched pieces of acrylic had to be cut to fit together. They were to be bolted on a varnished plywood frame for structural stability and to withstand the wind and precipitation that would ruin it. Smaller notched pieces of acrylic were cut like jigsaw puzzle pieces to create the track, which would be attached to the large screen in interlocking notches cut in the larger jigsaw pieces. Everything was cut with jigsaw joints for better durability.
In addition, we fabricated a large sign from chipboard to show which charity that this installation promoted. The charity that we had selected was Dress for Success (https://pittsburgh.dressforsuccess.org/), an organization dedicated to providing professional attire for women who wanted to enter the workforce but could not afford work clothes. This organization accepted monetary donations, so it worked well with our coin machine.
Lighting and Software
In our initial design, we planned to incorporate a high definition light display from three LED color bars. We also planned to outline every major line on the hockey link with animated LEDs, but quickly realized that this would require using several micro-controllers to animate 10+ individual strands of lights.
In a static state, the bar LEDs emit a slow color change animation. In order to add an element of fun, we attached a pair of IR break beam sensors to either side of each of the coin tracks. When the coin fell down one of the tracks and interrupted the connection between the sensors, this triggered a different light animation per track. This would last for 10 seconds, and then reset to the default animation. The animations were controlled by one Arduino, connected via XLR cable to one light bar, and daisy-chained to the other two bars. The micro-controller and wiring were placed in a plastic bin to prevent weather damage.
See the animation code below. Note that it requires the DMXSimple Arduino library.
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#include <DmxSimple.h> #define LEDPIN 13 #define SENSORPIN1 4 #define SENSORPIN2 5 #define SENSORPIN3 6 #define SENSORPIN4 7 // variables will change: int sensorState1 = 0, lastState1=0; // variable for reading the pushbutton status int sensorState2 = 0, lastState2=0; int sensorState3 = 0, lastState3=0; int sensorState4 = 0, lastState4=0; void setup() { /* The most common pin for DMX output is pin 3, which DmxSimple ** uses by default. If you need to change that, do it here. */ DmxSimple.usePin(3); pinMode(LEDPIN, OUTPUT); // initialize the sensor pin as an input: pinMode(SENSORPIN1, INPUT); digitalWrite(SENSORPIN1, HIGH); // turn on the pullup pinMode(SENSORPIN2, INPUT); digitalWrite(SENSORPIN2, HIGH); pinMode(SENSORPIN3, INPUT); digitalWrite(SENSORPIN3, HIGH); pinMode(SENSORPIN4, INPUT); digitalWrite(SENSORPIN4, HIGH); Serial.begin(9600); /* DMX devices typically need to receive a complete set of channels ** even if you only need to adjust the first channel. You can ** easily change the number of channels sent here. If you don't ** do this, DmxSimple will set the maximum channel number to the ** highest channel you DmxSimple.write() to. */ DmxSimple.maxChannel(30); } void loop() { // read the state of the pushbutton value: sensorState1 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN1); sensorState2 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN2); sensorState3 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN3); sensorState4 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN4); DmxSimple.write(6, 56); DmxSimple.write (7, 80); DmxSimple.write (9, 10); // check if the sensor beam is broken // if it is, the sensorState is LOW: if (sensorState1 == LOW) { // turn LED on: digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); DmxSimple.write(6, 136); DmxSimple.write (7, 255); DmxSimple.write (9, 20); /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */ delay(10000); } if (sensorState2 == LOW) { // turn LED on: digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); DmxSimple.write(6, 76); DmxSimple.write (7, 255); DmxSimple.write (9, 20); /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */ delay(10000); } if (sensorState3 == LOW) { // turn LED on: digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); DmxSimple.write(6, 96); DmxSimple.write (7, 255); DmxSimple.write (9, 20); /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */ delay(10000); } if (sensorState4 == LOW) { // turn LED on: digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); DmxSimple.write(6, 156); DmxSimple.write (7, 255); DmxSimple.write (9, 20); /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */ delay(10000); } } |
Installation
Although we were able to set up the lights at the site, our initial setup in Arsenal Bank was faced with many challenges. Because the screen was too large to be carried out, we had to assemble it in three different panels indoors. We glued and bolted the acrylic to three different parts of the wood frame. While this made the installation easier to transport at first, it was difficult to assemble on site because the track pieces had to lock into each other before being placed onto the acrylic. In addition, the strong wind, cold temperatures, and the snowfall that night had greatly inhibited our progress.
Because it was too difficult to create our installation on site, we set it up in the Ideate lab instead. By this time, the wood and acrylic had been warped by the cold moisture in the air and parts of the acrylic track and screen had broken off due to pressure. We had to glue the broken frame and screen back together. We were able to fully assemble the entire installation Unfortunately, the track on the right could no longer allow coins to roll through it because a little too much hot glue had seeped into the cracks. The track on the left functioned perfectly and could be used to trigger the lights.
Conclusion and Lessons Learned
From the onset, this project had a difficulty in scope that plagued it until the very end. It took much more time to laser cut the acrylic and wood than anticipated, which pushed back all other steps in the project. The materials weren’t resilient enough to handle below-freezing temperatures and wind, which led to the entire structure deforming and having to be moved indoors. Finally, the enormity of the structure required more coordination and manpower than what was available – each third of the structure weighed over 30 lbs and had to be transported by truck, and bolted together by at least two people.
A project of this scope would have benefitted from less physical structure and more dependence on scalable electronics.
