Breathe

Description

A long moveable wall holds an array of translucent, fleshy, glowing small round inflatables. There are several depth data cameras set up in front of the wall. Participants are encouraged to engage with the cameras by expressing their emotions and facial expressions. The wall responds by inflating and deflating, shape shifting to show the participants their perceived emotion, or shadow self.
The sound the wall makes as the rounds inflate and deflate is magical, like a breathing, sighing, Bikram yoga room.

Details

Contributors to this project include:

Oliver Tanner (Lead designer)

John Wasser (helped me out of a coding slump)

SurferTim (rewrote the original software and helped me on Arduino forum)

Ace Shelander (gave me an Arduino Mega shield that he designed)

Components

25 × 24v SOLENOIDS SMC NVJ114Y used for the input

25 × 24V SOLENOIDS WIC VALVE BRANDED MODEL 2PCK-1/8-24VDC-G used for the output (higher flow)

25 × GENERIC 11" BALLOONS

Project Logs

Collapse

Video!
Sophi Kravitz • 05/10/2015 at 01:51 • 0 comments
Frame 2
Sophi Kravitz • 04/11/2015 at 02:36 • 0 comments

Another design by Oliver Tanner. He left the assembling for me.
Frame
Sophi Kravitz • 04/11/2015 at 02:35 • 0 comments

Oliver Tanner designed and cut struts for this
Coding
Sophi Kravitz • 04/05/2015 at 18:35 • 0 comments

The first rev of this project is to make 25 balloons inflate and deflate randomly on a 2' x 2' wall.
I was given 100+ SMC solenoid valves from a decommissioned piece of equipment for free along with some other miscellaneous pressure/ vacuum fittings etc.
I was originally planning to use 25 3 port solenoid valves for intake (inflate) and outtake (deflate) both. To go between the two states was merely a pin toggle.
It quickly became noticeable that toggling didn't also have a "stop" setting. With a 3 port solenoid valve, you get 2 states, flowing in or flowing out. So there wasn't a way to control how much flow in either direction.
Another issue was that the outtake port didn't have a big enough aperture to let out enough air (1.25mm). So the balloons were inflating quite quickly through the tiny 1.25mm hole but not deflating. Since this wasn't lively enough to make a good display, we had to purchase higher flow solenoids for the outtake (deflate). These new solenoids are only used on the outtake and have a 2.5mm aperture. Plus they take 1/4" tubing while the intake uses 3/16" tubing.
I'll update this log soon with all the fittings.
And this created a new issue with the coding. When before there had been something basic, with just on/off toggle (written by John Wasser), now there is a new thing to do.
Each solenoid valve is now paired. When one is intaking, the counterpart must outtake. And all of these are on random times. I got quite a lot of help at the Arduino forum Sophi: begging for coding help and finished it up.