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 Maw
teampneumo.com

20 July 2012
Sketching12 PDX

Wednesday, July 25, 12

Hello!

Machine Project Provides resources to, and collaborates with,
artists working with technology; promotes

/ Mark Allen
interaction between artists, scientists, poets,
technicians and performers.


What is Machine Project
Mark 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.

Tod Carlyn
-- ThingM -- Founder of CRASH Space LA hackerspace
-- Maker of BlinkM & blink(1) -- Author of many original Arduino.cc tutorials
-- Contributor to MAKE magazine -- Instructor at ITP, Machine Project, et al
-- Author of “Hacking Roomba” -- Special Effects / Pyrotechnics work for ﬁlm
-- Star of Discovery’s “Unchained Reaction” -- Star of Discovery’s “Unchained Reaction”

http://todbot.com http://carlynorama.com
@todbot @carlynorama


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.


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


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


Quick movie of it in action

!

!

! !

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 Off
Bigger Dust Detector
Literal “bells & whistles”
First Idea adjustment (inlet pipe organ/reed instrument vetoed)

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 Off
Bigger Dust Detector
Literal “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 impeller
Bill Detection - Sensor for the bills and a special mounting harness for them
Sound & 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.


Pneumatics Recon, Sketches, Animatics


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.

45’

Pneumatics: How to trigger 220V from a distance?


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 collectors
Thank 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 ProtoShield
But 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.

Bill Detection
Show the Arduino the Money


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 detector
That proved useful in testing later on installed tubes (use TV remote to trigger)
IR detectors need modulated IR light,
Helps ﬁlter out ambient light changes
To 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 box
Had 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 & Cymbals
Needed 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 & Cymbals
Needed 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


bill
sensors

micro BlinkM
servo MaxM

springy
striker bell

Noise & Light: Mass Manufacture


Production bell box.
Laser-cut wood form the box,
3d printed sensor rings
Everything 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 designs
Spikey
Flat
More 3 Dimensional / More Visual Volume / Less Fragile / More Asymmetric
Needed 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 Process
Lots of tests with different tools
Picture of Me
White Assembled On the Grass
Painted Red
Primed?

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 museum
More 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 museum
More challenging because has to be more “hardened”
Excellent because the HAVE a maintenance staff with skills.
Reﬁne the behaviors of the spinners
Replaced 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


Clouds And Atoms
Sketching12 PDX


Cash machine sketching12

Cash machine sketching12

Cash machine sketching12

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