Okay people,this is a rough idea of how we might put this together. It’s basically a conduit or similar frame with a skin over it. The front is all decorated up nice and pretty and bolted on. This is just a basic construction plan and doesn’t include the electronics or power supply. Some things I imagine that different groups could take on different projects,i.e. one group builds the frame,one the skin and one the facade. The control panel speakers lights etc…will be built later but it should be designed to run on 12 volt. Batteries solar that sort of thing. If we’re having problems getting the power supply together maybe we could contact the Alternative energy zone people and see if they have any ideas. Anyone want to volunteer to build a section?
The frame could also be PVC pipe with fittings for the top corners. Not sure if there’s a 3-way “T”but that could be cobbled up. PVC is cheap and light!
If the skin were cardboard it could go in a burn barrel when we’re done.
I think the inside and the outside could be two separate projects. Frame skin roof and door structure is one thing. Decorative junk for the roof (antennas,an old clock LOTS OF CLOCKS!,…) could be ad hoc.
The inside of the booth should probably have some decoration,but it could be simple and non-distracting,like a repeating pattern of clock faces and CO2 logo. A silkscreen or stencil would be great;I can commit to making a stencil for spraypainting on-playa. Hmm…the right image could be this year’s CO2 screen and stencil and patch and…
I think the control panel should be sloped so that short and tall people can see it. Tilting it out at the bottom also makes room behind for junk to go. If it’s flat against the wall it would need to be a box structure,but if it tilts out at 20 –30 degrees it can be a simple flat panel,flush with the wall at the top.
I think the booth itself is straightforward work,but the control panel and it’s media is an open question still.
Actually I’d like to be able to reuse the time booth for GLOW out here in the early part of October. It makes more sense to me to get as much milage out of it as possible. So reusable materials rather than burning. Also the vinyl will fold up fairly small for efficient packing. The frame could go on a roof rack. I have tons of Billboard Vinyl too. I think it would be pretty easy to make a skin this way.It’s what I made my kayak out of and I know how to work with it.
A PVC Frame would be good too. I’m not attached to any particular material. I just want it to be strong enough for wind and the 300 lb drunk. The facade will give it a lot of rigidity and strength. I think dimension wise we should go with something a little wider than three feet like 3′X 4′That will give us some room to hide batteries and such. I really don’t have any Ideas about the control panel except to say Lights,knobs and a big button.
Oh sorry I didn’t see “billboard vinyl”. Reuse is better anyways. 4 foot wide makes better playa street presence too. Elbow room. (Batteries etc could go on the ground behind the booth though.)
I can make the control panel if you wanna make the booth. Ignoring aesthetics for a moment,and concentrating on the GUTS behind the scenes because that stuff will have the longest work time –
Really,there can be very few *functional* controls. Let’s say two for now. BEGIN (that triggers a bunch of distracting theatre that takes say 30 seconds to complete) then START (or “GO!”or “TRAVEL!”whatever) that triggers the time travel process.
1. Enter the booth. Something happens automatically. Warning! Danger! Welcome! Sign this death release!
2. Canned looped speech says what to do,basically,press the goddamn BEGIN button.
3. You are asked to choose a DESTINATION. Implementation TBD,but something like a big knob 1,000,000 BCE —-> 2525 CE,with big destinations marked with cliche pictures (dinosaur;rome 500 BCE;black rock city 2009 BCE;Neo TOkyo 2019BCE …).
4. Told to press GO!.
5. All but 2009 playa are OUT OF ORDER so you are told to make another choice. This can’t take too long or people will GET BORED!
6. Set to playa 2009,pressing GO! Makes Stuff Happen.
7. ??????
8. PROFIT!
I have no idea how to do the canned speech. mykl,do you have one of those gildersleeve (whatever the fuck it’s called) audio things? Can it have multiple “files”in it? I can cobble up a microprocessor system to trigger it for all the steps above. If so we’re all set. If not,I just don;t know how to do canned audio with an external trigger. iPods and all that shit are extremely unfriendly to hacking.
David,have any ideas here?
I’m down with getting the basics out of the way. I’ve got a lot on my plate and not much $$$ so I’m not sure If I can do the booth frame or not,I can do the skin (I have all the ingredients)but if someone else could step up to the plate here it would be good. The Frame has to be made first so accurate measurements can be taken. Then we can fit the skin,panel and facade to it.
As for functional controls I had 2 in mind. An electric eye that activated the show upon entrance and a big button switch that activated the time travel experience. We could actually get away with one trigger and just make it seem like hitting the switch did something but since the show controller has two inputs,might as well use them.
The way you have the narrative broken down is pretty good. I think that everything should be out of order except “random”rather than”playa 2009″,just makes for more suspense.
I don’t really want to get into show control too much yet but the sd-25 from Gilderfluke is what I have. It can handle upto 225 seperate events and hold as many MP3′s or wav files as you have sd card storage for. It has two inputs of it’s own. If I can scrape up a couple of hundred extra dollars I will get the gilderfluke mini-brick 8 which is a microprocessor system you can program and it’s designed to do just this. I think it has two inputs and four or eight outputs and is designed to work with the other component. They also make a *REALLY* nice unit that runs lights sound &relays from one little box but it runs around 600 and I don’t have that much laying around. This is what all those displays at museums and big production haunted houses are run with. They are rock solid and will run for forty years. I know of some here in town that are running the dinosaur exhibit at the children’s museum. They’ve been running continuously for like eight or nine years.
If I can’t get the mini-brick I’ve got an old PLC that will work but isn’t as reliable,but it’s paid for.
Of corse all of this is moot if we don’t get the box built first. So anybody got time and an inclination to make a simple sturdy frame 3′X 4′X 7′tall? See the drawing for a better idea.
The SD-25 looks very good! I perused the manual;I didn’t spend enough time to work out all the weird modes’n'shit. I can write code for an Arduino and make output drivers for motors and lamps and to do the mappings between control panel switches etc and the SD-25. But I think we need to script the performance first.
Let’s keep this REALLY simple if we can…FOr reference,here;s your original proposal for a script. I marked it TRACK A,TRACKB,TRACK C:
TRACK A:“Welcome to C02 time travel pod number seven. Please extinguish any smoking materials fold your tray into it’s fully locked upright position. Time travel caries some inherent dangers,these include coughing,psychosis,loss of bowel control,urination,vomiting,earwax buildup,synesthesia,amnesia,splinching and being eaten by dinosaurs. In the event that part of you remains in the present and part of you is transported into the the past or future C02 will not be held liable. Time travel is a relatively new technology and certain factors of an indeterminate nature remain to be figured out. these include whether you are projected forward or backward in time and the distance in time traveled. The pod is now ready for time travel activation”.
Button lights up. Person in pod presses button. Lights flash things click,shake,steam is released,whatever,
TRACK B:Male voice,“C02 TTP ready for projection,please clear the flux vortex,all systems are a go. Time travel in 5 4 3 2 1″.
exit sign lights up
TRACK C:Female voice once again,“Thank you for traveling C02 pod seven you have traveled 2 seconds into the past,have a nice day. Please exit now.”
OK here’s my idea for implementation of this.
Put the light beam thingie inside the booth so it looks at the area where the perp’s feet will be. The perp will break the beam intermittently,but as long as it’s broken every 10 seconds or so we call that OCCUPIED. People could walk out in the middle of a performance,we have to handle that. When the light beam is unbroken for 10,20 seconds we call that EMPTY.
The control panel has a lot of shit,but only two real switches control the performance. I’ll call them BEGIN and GO!.
Given the above,here’s how I picture it being implemented:
0) If at any time booth is EMPTY sound stops playing and everything resets. This is checked for continuously,at all times. This is easy to do.
1) When the booth was EMPTY but becomes OCCUPIED,it plays and loops TRACK A. Lights and noises and motors and shit will turn on and be scary and annoying. “Welcome to C02 time travel pod number seven. …”
2) Eventually the perp presses BEGIN. (If they walk out it becomes EMPTY and everything resets.) TRACK B plays and loops. At this point I’d like to modify your script. Rather than begin count down,allow the perp to “choose a destination”. It’s theatre —nothing really happens here. TRACK B,which might say something like “Choose your time destination wisely;make sure you have inoculations for tims of plague,and be sure to carry a flechette gun when visiting appropriate times…”. It just loops. THe perp turns the DESTINATION dial and presses GO!,but for all choices but one it just lights OUT OF ORDER and buzzes loudly. WHen “playa 2009″is chosen then it exits this state and proceeds. So this really is just you previous second state plus dial-set-to-2009. What do you think?
3) Perp presses GO! This plays TRACK C,does some shit to the lights and noisy things. “Thank you for traveling C02 pod seven you have traveled 2 seconds into the past,have a nice day. Please exit now.”At this point everything turns off,and the Arduino simply waits for the booth to become EMPTY. Eg. if the perp continues to stand there it will be come VERY DARK AND BORING.
Since it’s now EMPTY,it awaits the next OCCUPIED.
How does this sound? Will the SD-25 do this? From a software POV the code needs to:
1. wait for OCCUPIED.
2. play TRACK A,jiggle lights and noises
3. wait for BEGIN
4. play track B,jiggle ligts and noises
5. wait for GO! (note below)
6. play TRACK C,jiggle lights and noises
7. turn everything off
8. wait for EMPTY
?
oops “note below”. The GO! switch is wired in series with a switch that is ON when “playa 2009″is selected. So there’s a dial with all these times and places,but not switch closure except at 2009. So the software doesn’t even have to know shit,it jsut waits for switch closure.
Okay Tom,
This is the revised Script see if this works for you. I’ve tried to simplify the functions AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE while keeping content intact.
Here goes…
TIME POD SCRIPT 2.0______________________________________________________________________________
The interior of the booth is dark.
A light on the outside facade of the booth glows green next to a sign that says all systems ready.
Upon entering the booth a switch is thrown activating TRACK A.
Outside the booth the green light goes to a red one which says,Occupied,next to it.
Sci Fi Machine sounds start up background hums pings clicks etc…
some lights come on which dimly illuminate the interior.
The Control Panel remains dark
Female Robot voice (Emily,WooHoo!) i.e. TRACK A:
Welcome to C02 time travel pod number seven. Please extinguish any smoking materials fold your tray into it’s fully locked upright position. Please Select a point in time you wish to be projected to and engage the time travel button.
Panel lights up which says,“please make selection”,and has an arrow pointing down at a column of buttons. Most of the selections are out of order/ not lit up. Except for Random. (I just think random is more dramatic than playa 2009 but I’m willing to be flexible).
(Note:I had originally excluded this from my script because I didn’t think I’d be able to have someone select a different time and present a different track based on that selection. I figured if you weren’t able to make a real selection why even have it. also it was just one more thing that could break down. The other thing is,what might seem obvious to us might not to the average booth visitor so the fewer actions they have to engage in the better. Some interactivity is good but not so much as to make it complex. We are talking occasional people on mind altering substances after all. By eliminating my big red engage button and only having the selection button we eliminate the unnecessary step,make the show shorter,and reduce the controls down to one action.)
Okay continuing…
PART of the MP3 is just background noises for 20 seconds then a cricket could chirp for another few seconds before TRACK A Loops. incase somebody doesn’t push the button.
A feed back circuit to the SD-25 can mute TRACK A while TRACK B is playing
pushing the only functioning switch (the others could be attached to buzzers) engages…
…TRACK B:
Female Robotic voice:
Thank you. You have selected Random. Time travel caries some inherent dangers,these include coughing,psychosis,loss of bowel control,urination,vomiting,earwax buildup,synesthesia,amnesia,splinching and being eaten by dinosaurs. In the event that part of you remains in the present and part of you is transported into the the past or future C02 will not be held liable. Time travel is a relatively new technology and certain factors of an indeterminate nature remain. These include whether you are projected forward or backward in time and the distance in time traveled. Thank you for choosing CO2 Time Travel,a registered trademark of C02 International.
Male Pilots voice comes on:
(this is that kind of crunchy microphone sound with lots of static that we associate with military pilots)
This is your captain speaking,C02 TTP is ready for time projection,please clear the flux vortex,engaging time space warp capacitors (background noises become louder sounds of engines coming online) Countdown in FOUR,THREE,TWO,WE HAVE TEMPORAL SHIFT small motors with counter balances could be activated to make booth shake,Strobe light goes off control panel lights go crazy.
Every thing goes dark and silent for a beat or two. Small booth lights flicker on,control panel comes back on line sci-fi background noises start up softly.
Female Robotic voice:
Thank you for traveling CO2 pod seven you have traveled eleven seconds into the past. If you encounter yourself outside,do not be alarmed,stay calm and avoid eye contact. Ignoring yourself is considered the polite thing to do in these situations. Please Exit Now. Have a nice day.
(Exit sign Lights up) Booth goes silent and dark otherwise. Track B MP3 is still playing but it doesn’t have any sound it’s just there to mute TRACK A
The Rube leaves the booth.
Upon EMPTY booth resets,light on outside goes green next to a sign that says all systems ready. Que TRACK A and we’re ready to go again.
I really like your EMPTY/OCCUPIED solution it’s very elegant. I think for this application a motion detector might work better than an IR switch or a pressure plate on the floor. The reason I think this is because dust could coat the lens of the IR switch and a floor switch would be in contact with the playa and might therefore be prone to failure. The motion detector would work as long as there wasn’t anything blowing around in there. A robust floor switch would be best but man would it have to be tough.
This narrative simplifies the programing
1. empty,external green Ready LED ON
2. Occupied.
a. Switches ON external Red Occupied LED turns OFF External Green Ready LED
b.START TRACK A,basic Booth Lighting
c. Control Panel ON
3. Switch engages TRACK B Switches from Occupied/Unoccupied mode to PLAY
a,TRACK B Mutes TRACK A
b. Lights motors etc…ON OFF ON ON ON
c. All Lights off OFF (TRACK B is silent in this section of the recording
d. Booth lighting on
e. Lights OFF
f. Exit sign ON
ON EMPTY
reset
We will have to map the event timing on the recording and match the events that the Arduino Controller operates,i.e. We know that event X happens at 0:21 on the recording so Y should happen on the lights at 0:21
Does that make sense?
God I hope so,that made my brain hurt but it has sound logic.
I’m sending a copy of this to my friend,Michael Carrol,because he has much broader experience doing this sort of thing,and see what he thinks.
Oh and switch closure on a dial switch requires manual reseting at the end,which is why I went with a series of buttons though I think a dial is much cooler. I want this thing to require as little attending to as possible,just set it up and go.
I have some sound recorders that would be perfect for this! They were sold by Hallmark in greeting cards to record your message to Mom for mother’s day.
You record the message using the built-in mike when you push the record button,then play it back by pushing the play button. They run on 6V battery.
I’ll look for them in my piles of junk.
Here’s a wholesale seller of the voice recording modules themselves –$4 each in lots of 20 pieces.
http://www.soundexpressiongreetings.com/musical-greetings/recordable-sound-modules.html
I made a tall 1/2″conduit frame for my shower curtain that would be easy to duplicate for this thing. I just bent a square out of conduit for the top (connected to itself with a coupler) and bent four conduit hanger straps into U shapes to connect the four upright conduits to the top square with sheet metal screws. (Yes,I’m an amateur electrician in my spare time;that explains why I have a conduit bender.)
I think your edits are great. I made a few very minor ones. I put it all up on google docs. Never did a share before.
The columns of course represent microprocessor output pins. The state will be a software state. I can code this up in an Arduino,and send you an arduino. Since the booth is basically two switches (beam,“GO”) and some outputs we can simulate with LEDs,we can make all the code go really quickly.
I’ll stuff an Arduino into a weathertight box with barrier strips for wiring in the booth on the playa. I can make the control panel. That way we’ll both have functional TT booth controller machines to fuck with and test. If you can get benji amd emily to make sound tracks and you stuff ‘em in SD cards we’ll be in good shape.
david,that would be fucking great if you could bend up a frame! conduit would sit fine over rebar.
mykl,so this SD-25 thing. How exactly do the inputs work? For a given track (ignoring the 1,000,000 options) does it play as long as the input is held ON,or does it start playing with an ON pulse and never stop? Eg. what’s the relationship between the input pin state and the playing audio?
Fuck I don’t know. I’ve got a manual I’ll look and if I don’t find it there they have EXCELENT customer service and I’ll just call.
SD25,Heres what Michael Carrol has to say:
When it gets a pulse,it plays till the end of that file,then stops and awaits the next input.
It will ignore all subsequent inputs after the file has started playing until the file (music) is done. So if you want some silence at the end,for instance,just record silence at the end of the original file.
Hmm,so there’s no way to stop a playing recording? I can make the Arduino power the thing off,that’s really easy. Actually,that’s a good idea anyways —it will save tons of battery. The arduino consumes 10mA itself,almost nothing. One LED is twice the power consumption.
With a semaphore out front,standby power would be practically nothing.
Don’t forget that you can set up a feedback circuit (check the documentation) that will mute the first MP3 while when the second one plays. The device can play multiple mp3′s at the same time.
OK,no problem then. Brutally reduced to the SD-25′s point of view:
step 2:SD-25 is powered on.
step 2a:pulse starts TRACK A playing
step 3:perp presses GO
step 3a:pulse starts TRACK B playing and mutes TRACK A
step 3f:SD-25 (and other stuff) powered off.
If at any time the booth becomes empty,the SD-25 (and everything else) is powered off.
I love powering shit off under software control. It’s the easiest customization possible!
Re:control panel…..I have a 6″flat glass sound/touch sensitive plasma generator device that might look cool integrated into the control panel. It runs off of 4 AA batteries (also came with one of those 12V adaptor things.) Have also got a spare 8″electronic picture frame (doesn’t run off batteries,tho) that can run videos off an SD card. They look really nice with a lens in front of them –I’ve got a spare 6″glass lens (and also got two floppy 7″x 10″fresnel lenses which might come in handy for something.) Do we have a design yet for the control panel?
Videos on the picture frames look great with a lens in front. See links below for some pix of some steampunkish magic lanterns that are part of my installation in Philly:
http://www.pachs.net/dialogues-with-darwin/item/130/
http://www.pachs.net/dialogues-with-darwin/item/134/
http://www.pachs.net/dialogues-with-darwin/item/132/
http://www.pachs.net/dialogues-with-darwin/galleries/C6/
OK,here’s a disgusting drawing (using my new Bamboo drawing tablet —see how much it improves my drawings?). I’m picturing the control panel as mounted on the vertical frame EMTs,and sloping out at the bottom. It might even be basically a shelf,eg. 90 degrees from the wall. I’ll mock this up so that it’s comfortable for some one 5’8″but others can use. If anyone in a wheelchair comes by,let’s beat them up.
Yellow hair is supposed to be booth lighting —I will make this a software-variable halogen,because during the day everyone will have night blindness. TBD,make the curtain/door translucent? Hmm…I have some pieces of that dual-walled translucent plastic thermopane crap that would make a good door but they’re only 4 foot high. Lightweight too.
Red is guts (battery,controller) and wiring. The motor and disc on top is the WELCOME/DANGER sign.
FUCK how do I insert an image here?!
Hey,someone tell me the dimensions of the facade. Are we (Benji,me,?) doing the sticking up top,or what??
The Facade Dimensions are up to you though the Frame is going to be approximately 3′X 4′X 7′. I’ll make sure that it accommodates at least a sheet of plywood. I’m not sure what you mean by “sticking”. If you are referring to attaching the facade to the frame,nobody’s figured that out yet. I was thinking about just drilling some holes through the facade and the poles once we get up there and passing a machine screw through them and bolting it onto the frame that way. I’m sure there’s a better way to do it and I’m all ears to suggestions. I think whatever the base of the facade is made from it should give some rigidity to the structure as a whole. How it looks is entirely up to you,Tom suggests a lot of clocks and the script has a couple of things in it that need to be worked into the design. Hope that helps. Call me or Tom if you want to discuss this a little more in-depth.