A little bit of progress

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Update 2/4-3/4

Its been a  while since I could look at…ok I’ll stop with the ridiculous Stained reference. But I have made significate progress all around.

MASSIVE BOB

Massive bob is in production. All hardware and parts have been received. In order to decide the final form of the massive bob I used an Instagram poll to see what the community thought. I ultimately used the form the community picked with a few teaks to refine the overall shape. (insert poll photo and final form photo, light study video)

Image of the seven forms proposed for the massive bob.
Image of the seven forms proposed for the massive bob.
Final form for the massive bob, I used #4 from the previous image with a few minor tweaks to refine it.
Final form for the massive bob, I used #4 from the previous image with a few minor tweaks to refine it.
Section view of the massive bob showing the internal structure and mounting for the speaker and pcbs.
Section view of the massive bob showing the internal structure and mounting for the speaker and pcbs.
Light test for the seven versions of the massive bob, I used this to determine if all seven options would be put forth in the poll.

XY GANTRY

Gantry is assembled and works as expected. Currently I’m running the gcode through openbuild’s grbl interface. I’m trying to install the software on a RaspberryPi so that I can have a tidy package to install on grid structure where this will be installed. I will then VNC into the RPi for control of the software.

Short test of paths.
Another short test of the paths.

Interactions: Tangible

The interactions have been a major point of struggle. After a lengthy conversation with Sarah, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need to sort out the interactions at this point in time. I know that may sound counter intuitive, however, the truth is this installation needs to be user tested and prototyped at full scale. For the upcoming installation I will have a few types of paths preprogramed into the system, after a viewer interacts with the installation I will ask them to answer a few questions about the experience. I currently have a four test paths that last a few hours each. I’m also planning to include the ability for me to use a joystick to make random movements as well.

Continuous curved line test path.
Continuous curved line test path.
Spiraled array test path.
Spiraled array test path.
Randomly generated overlapping circles test path.
Randomly generated overlapping circles test path.
Randomly generated overlapping squares test path.
Randomly generated overlapping squares test path.

PROJECTION

I am able to stream video from an RaspberryPi over the web and cast it to Touchdesigner. I have implemented a few ways to bring the video into TouchDesigner but I haven’t found the best option as of yet. I still need to work on the Touchdesigner flow, it works in some instances and not others, I also need to reverse the drawing order of the cached pixels, right now the new pixels are drawn behind the previous. Some of this will need to be tweak during initial installation to take into account the environmental factors.

Five different iterations of the Touchdesigner flow.
Five different iterations of the Touchdesigner flow.