Texting Art Piece

[Sophi]

Hello-
How about several large 2'x3' LED panel connected to an keyboard mounted on a wooden (for burning) or metal frame.
Located off Esplanade at some of the O'clocks (3,4,6,8,9, center camp).
You can type messages on them, and the messages scroll through. Like at the airport, waiting for the departures!
At certain times in the night, a message like "Hug the person standing next to you" comes up and stays there for awhile.

Another step would be to have them be capable of sending messages from one to the other.
For example type, "Oliver I love you" and press the 6 button and the message goes to 6'oclock.

I may be able to obtain some cheap ($200) LED panels ~2'x3'. These are similar to the kind you see on the highway.
I'd (we'd) need to design a controller for them and figure out how to deal with the power issue.
Fun?

Sophi
mix-engineering.com

[andy]

Yes, it's a kind of cool idea. Just remember that you're in the dust which plays havoc on electronics. But in fairness I had an ordinary laptop running at my art piece and it survived just fine, disk drive and all. Your two choices for power are a car battery and a small generator - if you are using car batteries you will almost certainly need to recharge every day, and would need a generator for that and a wagon to carry the batteries to the charging location. Otherwise you need a generator at each location. The controller is not that tough - you can get a cheap Raspberry Pi which could control each location - but transmitting between locations without a repeater will be a challenge - inexpensive transmitters like the ZigBee have a much less range than you would need.

[Nipple]

Sparkfun GSM module... then maybe put it on the participant run GSM network.

It'd be neat to see a non standard usage of Papa Legba's playatel phone network.

[GreyCoyote]

Andy: FWIW, I am having good luck with a pair of the 60 mW Zigbee modules at a range of 1.25 miles and 15 feet of elevation AGL. And this is with the standard wire antennas and some foliage in the LOS between units. A good 5db external should do even better. YMMV

Also FWIW, I found that a certain species of pine tree acted like a brick wall at Zigbee freqs placed 50 feet from the unit. Really wierd, that. Even chain link was more transparent than that damned pine tree!

Edit: A link to what I'm using is here: http://www.parallax.com/product/32408

[FossaFerox]

Andy: FWIW, I am having good luck with a pair of the 60 mW Zigbee modules at a range of 1.25 miles and 15 feet of elevation AGL. And this is with the standard wire antennas and some foliage in the LOS between units. A good 5db external should do even better. YMMV

Also FWIW, I found that a certain species of pine tree acted like a brickwall at Zigbee freqs and 50 feet fron the unit. Really wierd, that. Even chain link was more transparent than that damned pine tree!

You sure it was a tree and not a REALLY well disguised cell tower?

[Sophi]

Thanks for the replies!
For power, I agree, probably 1 or 2 car batteries per panel per day (if this becomes a project we can get real numbers).
I ran a project in 2011 on solar. A deep cycle battery could be recharged in a day on the Playa. I think that there are solar groups that provide solar for art projects - for a fee, they will bring panels to charge your batteries.

Re: Communication between the LED panels, I do think that the Xbee modules, even though they have a large range, will certainly be interfered with by all the other stuff "in the fields". I need to research this and please- keep the suggestions coming. I haven't done this kind of communication system before.

RaspPi YES!

BUT, back to the art part of the whole thing. Do we have Poetry Tuesday or is the whole thing like Mad-Libs? Is the one located at 5' o'clock designated for personal ads? That would be hilarious. Like Craigslist personals on Playa!

Thanks for discussing this!
Sophi

[GreyCoyote]

I find the XBee modules are remarkably interference free. One end of my link is sitting right next to a 1 watt 802.11(b) antenna with 21 db of gain. Neither the XBee nor the 802.11 link seem to notice each other.

These modules are a lot of fun the play with. I was considering putting a little SIRF-based GPS, XBee module, and an Ardurino with lithium cell on my cat just so I could "watch" him. It hasn't happened yet, but then again, I haven't opened that fifth of single-malt scotch under the tree yet, either!

On the subject of batteries, I would think a single, cheap wet-cell/deep-cycle would power the whole thing for a week without a problem. The Xbee modules only use real current for a moment during transmit, and are a flea-power during receive. And a Raspberry PI (or whatever) is also minimal. The backup battery on my little project is 6 AH and it runs it for better than 24 hours when power drops.

[Sophi]

I was told that the amber panels are 300 Watts when all the LEDs are on. I can maybe get RGB panels too, and they will use up much more power.
Probably a good average power would be 1/3 of all the LEDs on at a time: 100 Watts.
An average deep cycle battery is 85 amp-hours at 12V. So, if the panels are only on at night, they could run for a few days YES!

[GreyCoyote]

Wow. That's a bunch of power. I was thinking (due to a mis-reading of your pose) of 2x3 INCHES.

Just a small error of scale.

Regardless, Group 29 deep-cycles are 100+ AH for about $90. A pair of those would serve well perhaps, with one battery on the charger while the other is driving lights and controller. If you can get by on 6 volts, GC2 (golf-cart batteries) are half the voltage and twice the AH rating for not much more money.

[Captain Goddammit]

I was told that the amber panels are 300 Watts when all the LEDs are on. I can maybe get RGB panels too, and they will use up much more power.
Probably a good average power would be 1/3 of all the LEDs on at a time: 100 Watts.
An average deep cycle battery is 85 amp-hours at 12V. So, if the panels are only on at night, they could run for a few days YES!

I think you are being WAY too optimistic about batteries.
At a 100 watt draw, a 12 volt battery would be pumping out around 9 amps, call it 10 because there are always inefficiencies in the system. That's theoretically about 8 hours worth from an 85 amp-hour battery, but after about 4 or 5 hours that battery would be at "danger level" low.
You'd want a pair of deep cycle batteries just to run this piece for one night.

[trilobyte]

If you're looking to have the piece placed on the open playa, the location is up to the ARTery. Registration for projects hasn't opened up yet, but you can find out tons of useful information about creating art for the playa here.

[Sophi]

Thanks Trilobyte! I can't wait for the theme and the art info to be posted.

Captain- yup, yup. Once/If designed, we can measure/calculate this. Hey- it's only power

[Sophi]

The project idea evolves....
2 large LED panels, with keyboards, placed far enough away from each other that the participants can't see each other, but close enough that spectators can walk between the two and see the whole art piece.
The keyboards are used by a participant to converse with the participant at the other panel. The conversation is public between the participants and all spectators can view it.

There is some basic intelligence built in (today, this idea comes in honor of Alan Turing) -if one or both stations have no participant, the panel prints an enticing message to passersby to come and chat.

What do you guys think?

[GreyCoyote]

LOVE it.

How about adding text-to-speech capability and hooking it in to an amplifier? You could make it insult people as they walked by if nobody was using it!

[EspressoDude]

might consider renting one from a sign company....like ones used along highways..3 - 4 lines of bright text, and lots of options like radio links, keyboards, cameras. maybe full color LED panel to display images

[Captain Goddammit]

Sexting.

[BBadger]

But will there be enough pixels for some good ASCII porn?

Code: Select all

* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *
g                                               g  
o /     \             \            /    \       o
a|       |             \          |      |      a
t|       `.             |         |       :     t
s`        |             |        \|       |     s
e \       | /       /  \\\   --__ \\       :    e
x  \      \/   _--~~          ~--__| \     |    x  
*   \      \_-~                    ~-_\    |    *
g    \_     \        _.--------.______\|   |    g
o      \     \______// _ ___ _ (_(__>  \   |    o
a       \   .  C ___)  ______ (_(____>  |  /    a
t       /\ |   C ____)/      \ (_____>  |_/     t
s      / /\|   C_____)       |  (___>   /  \    s
e     |   (   _C_____)\______/  // _/ /     \   e
x     |    \  |__   \\_________// (__/       |  x
*    | \    \____)   `----   --'             |  *
g    |  \_          ___\       /_          _/ | g
o   |              /    |     |  \            | o
a   |             |    /       \  \           | a
t   |          / /    |         |  \           |t
s   |         / /      \__/\___/    |          |s
e  |           /        |    |       |         |e
x  |          |         |    |       |         |x
* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *

[Sophi]

BBadger- of course there will be! 8-bit only.