Charged Conversation

[Sophi]

Hello!
Check out my project vision: http://mix-engineering.com/charged-conversation/.

If you have any suggestions on how to make this better, or how to decrease the budget (link to spreadsheet on the bottom) or anything at all, I'd love to hear it.
I'm also looking to rent truck space from Reno to BRC, one-way, pre-burn, anyone know of a service?

YES you can sext with this one, just maybe not in ASCII.
Cheers!
Sophi

[trilobyte]

You may get more interest if you post some info about your project on this site, rather than just tell people to go someplace else (the general rule of thumb is 'if you can't be bothered to write anything about it, people may not be bothered to click'). Also, the Share Resources board is the best place to be posting for ride and gear haulage shares and similar requests. Good luck with your project.

[Sophi]

Thanks Trilobyte, good advice.

For those wondering what this project is about:
Charged Conversation is an interactive project inspired by the popular refrigerator “Magnet Words”.
The words are painted white wood with vinyl stickers to make the words on one side, and LED strip to make the words on the other.
The LED strip is completely powered by rechargeable 9V batteries which will be recharged using solar panels.

There will of course be Burning Man themed words! And emoji.

The words are placed using pegboard on an 8' x 8' wooden structure (which I plan to burn - YEAH!). I have spoken to FAST about the burning protocol.
Participants can create messages, poetry and dirty jokes - FUN!

[AntiM]

Nice. I love the concept.

Our third year, we actually hauled real fridge doors and magnetic words out to the playa, had them in front of our camp. Fun, but heavy.

[Savannah]

I really like the idea.

At one point I had a full-on fridge poetry addiction; 4 sets. I remember the Psychiatry and Shakespeare sets being the most fun.

[BBadger]

Sounds like a great project in concept, but I think you need to run through some of the numbers and details and have a more concrete plan. Then you can really sell the project and gain additional funding.

For example, the lowest-power LED strips I could find used 0.96W/ft. Many such strips reduce overall power by reducing the density of LEDs; the above strip only has about 1 LED/inch. The low density, in conjunction with the low light output, will make it hard to read words.

There's also the issue of power. Assume that your word will use only 1 foot of strip on average (a very short or tiny word!). A strip that uses ~1W/ft means that your 9V battery, at 250mAh of capacity, will only last 2.25hrs a night even with perfect power conversion. That's not long at all! Even the 500mAh variants aren't that great. You should consider using some 6V high capacity NiMH battery packs for about the same price. Those 9V batteries, of all types, are really meant for specialty applications like smoke detectors, not powering lights; they're effectively 6xAAAA batteries in series. Fully discharging your batteries is also very bad for them and shortens their lifespan.

Also, many LED strips use 12VDC input power, and some 24VDC. It is possible to run some 12VDC strips at 9V and have them produce less light, but what you'll probably want to do with a 6V battery pack is use a DC-DC converter. But there's still that dim LED strip problem. They're just not very good for low-power solutions that need to fill in a lot of light.

Instead of using strips, how about something else like making stencil cut-outs of the words and back-lighting through the holes? The words at night could look almost exactly the same as they do during the day. With back-lighting, you can get away with far fewer strategically placed bright LEDs. You could even use those automatic color-changing LEDs if you want them to change color randomly. They only need about 3V of voltage. Putting a resistor in series with each LED, and then dropping the voltage down with a DC-DC converter (step down) will light them up nicely and your batteries will last practically forever. You could even use lower voltage battery set, like 3x AA NiMH batteries (3.6V) you can buy at Costco and use plain resistors to get the current you need (15-20mA). The LEDs are pretty bright. They were great for Jack-O-Lanterns.

And now for a little red teaming:

You should consider some sort means to ensure that people can't just steal the words. People will want to take a word home with them. Though you could use something like a metal cable attached to each of the words, the words may get pulled off regardless, possibly damaging the art piece. Perhaps encase the words behind something like plexiglass, but allow the words to move around with magnets or something else from the outside. Something like those magnetic aquarium glass cleaners could be used to drag them over to a specific point. One benefit of plexiglass is that if you use two panes, you can always have the other side of the word shine through. Figuring out how to do something like that elegantly will be up to you.

[GreyCoyote]

Taking BBadgers post one more step: create a conducting grid on the magnetic display surface. When a word is placed on the surface, it makes contact with the grid and lights up. Using alternating polarity copper strips or disks and pickup points on the word modules would be a starting point. You could sort out the resulting reverse polarity issue by having a bridge rectifier in each module.

This scheme lets you use a single, powerful, and relatively cheap power source for the whole thing. It also causes a word to cease working when disconnected from the grid, perhaps mitigating theft a bit. And your lighting can now be brigbter without worrying so much about battery capacity. Might also cut costs down, especially if you have many words.

[Sophi]

Bbadger, thanks for the well thought-out comment.
You and GreyCoyote address the battery issue perfectly, which is a very weak point in this design.
GreyCoyote I had considered your design idea -your suggestion of the bridge rectifier for the polarity issue is perfect.

Besides just...batteries not lasting long enough, there is the removing and putting the batteries onto solar charging stations, then putting them back onto the words.
Times 150, every night!

I didn't do the power calculations-
I had a large light up Fish attached to my bike in 2012. It used 9- 9V batteries to light 9 4 foot (or greater) LED strips.
I remember the lights lasting "all night" but I didn't always stay up all night.
As a side note: this was my most well-received project ever. Everyone knows what a fish is, and one with a big mouth and eyes on a pull string was super fun to interact with.
The project took me a week to build pre-playa, out of paint sticks and foam, costing under $100.

I love the idea of building the lights into the structure. A few RGB light sources, with 8 proximity sensors per 1' square area, one power source, no batteries.
Maybe combined generator and solar.
The structure is painted black with multiple pin holes in it, the words are as you suggested, cut out so that the black background shows through. At night, the pin holes show light through the cut out words. Words can even be laser cut from acrylic which will save hugely on shipping from NY.

The theft thing- well....I figured on taking the whole thing apart on Thursday and burning the structure Thursday night, thus avoiding the large crush of people that arrive Thursday for the weekend. I also thought, if even 50 out of 150 words get stolen by Thursday, that would be a lot, and less to ship back. The other years that I left electronicals out on Playa, nothing got stolen. I am optimistic for sure!
Sophi

[BBadger]

Those projects like that fish, and pieces like this one as well, are my favorite type on playa. The big art pieces attract the attention initially, but it's the the small interactive art projects that people really remember and tell their friends about. They attract a crowd but doesn't need to be huge or expensive. It's like a little treasure to find out on the playa.

You can even bring them back in successive years, or expand them to multiple pieces. I think the art grant committee likes these kinds of projects as well, as long as the details are laid out well. This project in particular incorporates multi-person interactivity, which is highly encouraged.

I agree that centralizing the power is a much better idea than putting it on each and every word. It could save a lot on the cost of the words themselves and you may not ever need to replenish the batteries the whole event if you get some larger batteries (or just solar charge it with a large panel at the piece if you really want to save power). Embedding some bits of metal into the words could allow words to stick to sub-surface magnets under the lit-up panel in any position, and the words could be flipped over to be displayed backwards if needed.

Those words can be so cheap to produce that many they could be stolen by design so that the current catalog of available words shifts as words are stolen and new ones replace them. The parlance of our times!

You can definitely etch the acrylic, but some parts of letters (such as the middle of the O-letter) would need to be held in place by pieces of the material, like on stencils. For more complex fonts that could be a big pain. If you could print the word on the surface of a sheet of acrylic it would show through without needing to fill in the holes. You could even sandwich the printed word with another piece of acrylic, which would also give you protection of the print, make the dust not stick so much to the printed surface (and easier cleaning), and the diffusion of light through the the acrylic could give the "word" a lit up border at night, enhancing the word-sticker effect.

[chuckularone]

You can definitely etch the acrylic, but some parts of letters (such as the middle of the O-letter) would need to be held in place by pieces of the material, like on stencils. For more complex fonts that could be a big pain. If you could print the word on the surface of a sheet of acrylic it would show through without needing to fill in the holes. You could even sandwich the printed word with another piece of acrylic, which would also give you protection of the print, make the dust not stick so much to the printed surface (and easier cleaning), and the diffusion of light through the the acrylic could give the "word" a lit up border at night, enhancing the word-sticker effect.

I was thinking. You could edge light the word panels. Engrave the words halfway through the acrylic. That way when lit up the engraved portion would pick up the light and the unengraved portion would only very faintly glow.

I've seen this done with address markers on houses. It would decrease the complexity of the build. You wouldn't need to worry about supporting the center of letters like B, O and P and you could cover the edges (and hold in the LEDs) with either a tough tape of a wood frame if you want to get fancy. I would still use central power.

[EspressoDude]

thoughts about acrylic or lexan or other clear plastics. they will get covered with playa dust. think low humidity, static electricity, and the fact that playa dust gets everywhere (yes, even there too). the plastic will become scuffed and less transparent. make a trial piece then attack it with skotchbright or komet klenser then see how it looks.

you may be able to use a transparent 'pegboard' and back light with one or two fluorescent lights (12volt or powered with a cheap HF inverter )

[Sophi]

These are all such great comments and insights, thanks everyone!

I was thinking 3/16" white acrylic (there's a 7328 Plexiglass type that is 73% opaque) with the words themselves lasered out.
This image isn't completely accurate, but it gives some idea. Photoshop even allows you to place the 73% opacity for the acrylic!
[attachment=0]new nighttime playa small.jpg[/attachment]

The 3/16" white acrylic breaks down to about $15 per long word, not quite cheap enough to be happy about them being stolen.
1/8" thick acrylic breaks down to about $10 per long word (5 or 6 letters).

The lasering is costly. I'm still waiting on a quote, but some online local pricing has it at about $45/ half hour. Each LETTER is estimated at 2-3 minutes.
I am sure that etching costs much less, but I don't think that the effect will be dramatic.
I couldn't completely understand what you all meant by etching. Did you mean use 3/16" plastic, then etch 1/16" down?

Sophi

[BBadger]

I was thinking with etching more like creating a stencil out of the acrylic. That won't work though because many font characters are not meant for stenciling. You'll have large gaps where there are suspended holes, and even without those, digital type is not designed with structural integrity in mind (let alone as stencils).

For actual etching/cutting, you could invest in an electronic cutting machine. It can etch glass, cut fabric, and create iron-ons or all kinds of stuff. You could even use something like cardboard or full-sized magnet sheets as a cutting material. They take SVG-converted files too; you could fabricate basically anything. It's almost insane just how advanced and automated craft hardware has become. It's like CNC for crafts.

Espressodude brings up some good points about everything getting covered in dust. That's going to be a lot of testing, maybe even with some hygrophobic sprays or something that might resist water as well as dirt and other stuff.

[Sophi]

Cool. I have access to some equipment, but I'm pretty sure I'll have to pay to use it at the magnitude I need.
I can draw the letters with tags that suspend the middles. I'm using a font, but then converting the font into a "shape" anyway.

You also gave me something to think about. CARDBOARD WORDS. $60 in material vs. $1500.
Con is they'd never be able to be used again, and the clean look I want wouldn't be there, but I could have a one-night sushi restaurant at the art piece with the $1440 I save!