cash machine sketching12

A Series of Tubes, Motors, Bells, Clamps, Styrofoam, & Arduinos

The Cash Machine Installation at The New Children’s Museum, San Diego

Tod E. Kurt and Carlyn Mawteampneumo.com

20 July 2012Sketching12 PDX

Wednesday, July 25, 12

Hello!

Machine Project / Mark Allen

Provides resources to, and collaborates with, artists working with technology; promotes interaction between artists, scientists, poets, technicians and performers.


What is Machine ProjectMark Allen’s brainchild idea. Not an art gallery. Not a hackerspace.But has art openings and classes on Arduino and fabric sensors.Projects at LACMA, Walker, Hammer, MOCA, Hayward, etc.

Carlyn-- Founder of CRASH Space LA hackerspace-- Author of many original Arduino.cc tutorials-- Instructor at ITP, Machine Project, et al-- Special Effects / Pyrotechnics work for film-- Star of Discovery’s “Unchained Reaction”

http://carlynorama.com@carlynorama

Tod-- ThingM-- Maker of BlinkM & blink(1)-- Contributor to MAKE magazine-- Author of “Hacking Roomba”-- Star of Discovery’s “Unchained Reaction”

http://todbot.com@todbot


What we wanted

A whimsical experience of motion & sound, demonstrating cool physics principles…

…that sucks money out of people’s hands.

This was the result.


The Cash MachineAn interactive fundraising installation piece now in the lobby of a children’s art museum in San Diego


The Cash MachineAn interactive fundraising installation piece now in the lobby of a children’s art museum in San Diego


Quick movie of it in action

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Initial Proposal – Make stuff up. Don’t forget the “bells & whistles”


Our design brief was brief:- Detect bills- Make noises, flash lights, make motion - Use 3 HP Dust Collector (Harbor Freight, Red) if possible

Stuff Hanging OffBigger Dust DetectorLiteral “bells & whistles”First Idea adjustment (inlet pipe organ/reed instrument vetoed)

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Also:

• Open Design

• Modular, both technically & artistically

• Manufacturable, with modern fabrication techniques


Our design brief was brief:- Detect bills- Make noises, flash lights, make motion - Use 3 HP Dust Collector (Harbor Freight, Red) if possible

Stuff Hanging OffBigger Dust DetectorLiteral “bells & whistles”First Idea adjustment (inlet pipe organ/reed instrument vetoed)

Anatomy of the Cash Machine

• Pneumatics

• Dollar Bill Detection

• Sound & Light

• Movement


Pneumatics - Includes the tubing, the cyclone and the impellerBill Detection - Sensor for the bills and a special mounting harness for themSound & Light - Wanted real world behaviors so we had to figure out the best way to approach that.Movement - And there needed to be movement on the wall that had to be very large.

Pneumatics

Impeller & Impeller Trigger, Cyclone, 200 ft. of Tube.


Recon, Sketches, AnimaticsPneumatics


Animation movie of how it might look in the space.

The pneumatics are the tubing, the cyclone, and the impeller that all need to find a home in a pretty stunning space.The space is very vertical: our main elements would start at the 15 feet and go up to 35 feet.

This was a good experiment on how to convert architectural diagrams into a 3D model for visualization.

Pneumatics: How to trigger 220V from a distance?

45’


Possible trigger solutions: - Run wire (Would be ugly, issues with wire length: it’s 80ft along wall, 40ft line-of-sight)- Considered doing a custom radio solution, but that didn’t solve having a UL rated 220V switching solution.- Ended up finding wireless remote designed for dust collectorsThank you Amazon (Amazon as research tool)

Pneumatics: Hack an existing product to switch 220V.


Using a “Long Ranger III” wireless remote for 220V woodworking equipment.Remote taken apart and circuit made to push buttons on remote with relays.Circuit soldered down on a SparkFun ProtoShieldBut that was flakey for some not understood reason

So switched to custom Xbee shield circuit. Just toggle digital pin, not full serial, and part of shield stack where most Xbee shields suck.

Show the Arduino the Money

Bill Detection


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Bill Detection: IR Beam Break


Render from proposal. A kind of “clamp” that surrounds the tube and has embedded sensors, holding a box of electronics.

Challenges we had to figure out:- Can we really detect bills?- Will this mounting solution work?- How to actually build the mounts?

Let’s assume IR Beam-Break– Would the tube refract the light?- Speed of detections, are the sensors fast enough- Tolerance of Ambient Light

How to mount the sensors?- Use existing tube mounting hardware?- Design our own laser cut mounting rings?- Or design our own 3D printed clamps?

So what are those components... (pictures of ‘lil ring boards)Standard IR LED and standard TV IR remote control detectorThat proved useful in testing later on installed tubes (use TV remote to trigger)IR detectors need modulated IR light,Helps filter out ambient light changesTo modulate light, need Arduino hardware timers, can’t “delay()” this

Bill Detection: Lots of tweaking for sensor ring itself


Many design iterations of the sensor rings and the electronics boxHad around 40 versions, about 10 fabbed.Will it hold? Will it align the sensors correctly?

Bill Detection: Testing


First prototype PCB (fabbed 3 versions total)3D printed rings act as both clamps around the pipe and as mounts for sensor boards

Noise & Light

Bells, Servo Motors & MaxMs


Tried different bell types (Amazon & Guitar Center as research tool)- Desk bells- Jingle bells- Cow bells- Shaker Sticks- Drums & CymbalsNeeded something that cuts through the noise but isn’t annoying.Children’s handbells seemed to best solution.

Noise & Light: Bells, Bells, Bells, but no cowbell


Tried different bell types (Amazon & Guitar Center as research tool)- Desk bells- Jingle bells- Cow bells- Shaker Sticks- Drums & CymbalsNeeded something that cuts through the noise but isn’t annoying.Children’s handbells seemed to best solution.

Noise & Light: Render of final bill sensor bell box


Noise & Light: Mass Manufacture

bellspringy striker

BlinkMMaxM

microservo

billsensors


Production bell box.Laser-cut wood form the box,3d printed sensor ringsEverything painted Machine Project Red

And the arrangement of bells produce a custom melody

Spinny Bits

Styrofoam Fantasy


This was not really part of the original project plan, and mentally had started out as little flags and pinwheels.

But realized that we would need some fairly large objects to fill the volume of the space.

Servo drivable / combination of full rotation and regular for different behaviors. Some motion all the time and some just a trigger reward.LIGHT Texture

Spinny Bits: Design Research


Initial designsSpikeyFlatMore 3 Dimensional / More Visual Volume / Less Fragile / More AsymmetricNeeded to change mounting style (there is a hole down the middle)

Spinny Bits: Material & Process Research


Styrofoam, what to cover the styrofoam with, what could expedite the process

Spinny Bits: Manufacturing Process


Manufacturing ProcessLots of tests with different toolsPicture of MeWhite Assembled On the GrassPainted RedPrimed?

Spinny Bits: Layout and Feel


What kind of motor are they attached to, size factor, what order, how much Styrofoam of what sizes, how much balsa wood of each size? Nice to have a sketch book, but also need a spreadsheet.

Spinny Bits: Upgraded mechatronics: 3d prints replaced w/ ServoCity gearbox rated to 200 lbs


The Pay Off


Movie of it in use

The Pay Off


Results

• More money donated to museum in one month vs previous two years

• Kids and adults love it


What we learned from children watching it...Fixing the flash problem...Good for us that it is a children’s museumMore challenging because has to be more “hardened”Excellent because the HAVE a maintenance staff with skills.

In the future...

• Networked bill detectors

• Evolving behaviors for spinnybits

• DFM iteration to make kit-able

• Pitch kit to other museums


What we learned from children watching it...Fixing the flash problem...Good for us that it is a children’s museumMore challenging because has to be more “hardened”Excellent because the HAVE a maintenance staff with skills.Refine the behaviors of the spinnersReplaced on of the spinners where the arm didn’t survive (the glue didn’t take)

Thank You@carlynorama & @todbot

and huge thanks to New Children’s Museum in San Diego – thinkplaycreate.org– @iheartncm


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