Electronics and Electrical Storms

Friday, August 5th, was an amazingly productive day!  It started out early in the morning with a quick urban hike to our first installation site, as part of the Choose Yer Own festival.  We needed to get a sense of the extent of the space and how to best set ourselves up for Friday evening.  We decided on a strategy and narrowed down our installation zone to ensure a good density of lights.

Next, we made our way to CBC Calgary headquarters to meet with Chris dela Torre to do a radio interview on Illuminated Landscapes.  We met with Chris, who led us to the studio where we did our interview.  As it was our first experience in a radio studio, Claudia and I were naturally very excited - so excited, in fact, that we totally forgot to take some pictures of us looking professional with our mikes and headphones.  Chris was super easy to talk with, and the interview went really well.  It aired on CBC Radio One the next morning as part of the Daybreak Alberta series.  Hopefully some of you out there in internet land caught it!

After late breakfast and a nap, we went for a brief shopping excursion to gather materials to prototype some new ideas before making our way up north to an important appointment with some of our collaborators.  At Solarbotics headquarters, we met with Ben and Andrew, two Protospace directors, and Dave and Jeremie, from Solarbotics, to hash out a plan to make electronic kits.  Visitors to our installations who want a bit more challenge will be able to put together electronic circuits to allow LEDs to blink at different rates and in different combinations, more realistically mimicking the action of fireflies.  We’re very excited about working with Solarbotics to put these together and having the amazing Protospace peeps out at the installations helping the public assemble these!  And thanks to these four guys for teaching Claudia and I so much about electronics in such a short period of time!

circuits 

This is what collaboration looks like.

Getting excited over electronics!

As luck would have it, sometime during our meeting, the storm of the century rolled in and made it impossible for us to leave Solarbotics headquarters for a little while, so we took the opportunity to look around and check out all the goodies they have “in the back.”  Turns out they have everything any maker or tinkerer would ever want, including a small shop, a rad laser cutter, and several other gadgets, not to mention a well-stocked supply of parts.  It was great to be around people who are so passionate about what they do.

shop

rad laser cutter

Claudia standing in front of a very large machine.

Post-storm, Claudia and I went to go grab some well-deserved and long-awaited dinner, but not before batting through what felt like winter traffic.  Gotta love August in Calgary!

hail 

Just another August in Calgary...

Alas, at the end of the day, a rainbow appeared.  A sign of good things to come?  We think so.

How to Present an Idea

We presented our idea to the Calgary Awesome Foundation board of trustees and an audience at the Drop-In Centre.  We split up the 90 seconds between the two of us, and Vlad generated some great renderings.  Check it out!

I’m Claudia, and this is Vlad and we’ve noticed that a lot of great day-time city spaces are overlooked when darkness hits.   We want to invite the people of Calgary to light these spaces in welcoming but unexpected ways.  

For our first installation, we plan to illuminate an urban park by mimicking the presence of fireflies using LED lights. 

Our plan is to ask passers-by to install these simple LED fireflies so that anyone can take ownership in the making of this unforgettable magical space.

The first installation will take place in two weeks as part of the Choose Yer Own Festival, which is a four day festival of rad messes and the unexpected.  The second phase of light installations will occur throughout August in a variety of urban spaces.  Each individual installation will draw inspiration directly from its own site. 

This pie chart breaks down our material cost.  We will spend about $500 on several hundred blinking and non-blinking LED lights, which we will reuse.  $400 will be spent on button cell batteries and the final $100 will go to smaller purchases like floral wire, string, and electrical tape. 

Our project is simple in its execution - a battery and a light bulb.

 Because of this, it will benefit anyone who's ever wanted to stumble upon an adventure, regardless of age or technical ability. It is meant for both those who come with the intention of participating, as well as for those who just happen to stumble upon these illuminated public spaces.

Thank-you.

In the end our pitch was successful!  We've ordered and sourced a large part of our materials.  At our pitch night, we met one of the director's of Protospace, Calgary's hackerspace, Benjamin Reed.  He's connecting us with the folks over at Solarbotics today to see what other cool electronic parts we can source.  We're excited to collaborate with these folks for our August 12 LED blitz!  More finalized details in our next post.  Thanks for everyone's help thus far!