Load-in at theNAT

Here's what Organ Donor looked like loaded onto the freight elevator for setup at the Natural History Museum.

Organ Donor at San Diego Maker Faire 2016

The experience at San Diego Maker Faire 2016 was outstanding in every way. Held at Balboa Park on 1-2 October 2016, Organ Donor Opus 1 was deployed int the Natural History Museum, aka theNAT.

Setup was Friday evening and went as flawlessly as it ever has. The new software that allows for much easier matching of note to valve offered the only real glitch. After three of the hundred twenty two pipes were taught, the cursor started moving all on its own all across the touchscreen. This made it impossible to assign the right pipe to the right valve.

After making sure the wireless mouse was off, the touchscreen connector was re-seated. The problem re-appeared after about twenty pipes. After pondering how what we were seeing could possibly happen, we remembered that the pitch wheels were programmed as cursor movers. The pitch wheels were slightly nudged just enough to key up the on-screen cursors. After the wheels were turned to a neutral location, the problem went away.

We arrived on Saturday and put in 8 hours of hosting. We met a large number of enthusiastic attendees and had so many wonderful conversations! Several important contacts were made, and we were visited by Maker Faire staff to check in at least twice.

Small children generally thin out in the afternoon. This means less banging on the keyboard and more accomplished playing. The only time we stop people from banging on the keyboard is if it's endangering the keyboards. People generally never get to touch a pipe organ. They're always off limits and set off in their own space, or hidden behind walls. Getting to create sound out of acoustic pipes, even if it's a bit dissonant, is a special experience that can spark an entire career. Our goal is to demystify the pipe organ, show what's always hidden away behind walls, explain how they work, and most importantly - let people play.

On Sunday, several extremely accomplished players graced our exhibit, and garnered extended and loud applause. I got a chance to walk around the faire and talk to other exhibitors and enjoy the atmosphere. The amateur radio exhibits were great and the food truck lines were slow.

The most time that Organ Donor wasn't being played was perhaps 45 seconds over the two days.

Late Sunday afternoon, we were visited by Rob Burkhead, our event coordinator, who awarded us the Maker Merit blue ribbon! He passed along extremely high praise for our exhibit, efforts, attitude, and effect. Sol Diego and all San Diego burners should be proud. Without your support and encouragement, Organ Donor wouldn't be at the Faire.

Several other large Faire exhibits were from the burner community, and several booths were staffed by burners. Burners volunteered to help run the event, and lots of burners attended.

If you want a wonderful experience where you can share your art directly with appreciative, inquisitive, positive, and interesting people, then give exhibiting at Maker Faire a chance. Non-commercial booths are free. The process is easy. The hardest part is figuring out parking and setup.

Tear-down was easy and Faire and museum staff were entirely supportive and helpful. I can't say enough good things about how the Natural History Museum helps exhibitors. They know it is a big effort to get your art or exhibit set up. They help you solve problems, get things done, and make you feel appreciated. Plus, you're hanging in the same room with a big old dinosaur skeleton.

The organization that puts Maker Faire on is called San Diego Makers Guild. They are in need of volunteers for planning, organizing, recruiting, volunteering, and staffing. Join up at http://www.sdmakersguild.org

There is tremendous continuing potential for rich and varied representation of all San Diego Burners at Maker Faire (as well as STEAM Maker Faire, San Diego County Fair, and many other events up and down the calendar). Performance art, music, LED arts and crafts, fashion, engineering, structural exhibits, fire art, art cars, engineering tricks, magic, improv - it's all welcome.

We are very much looking forward to coming back to Maker Faire with Organ Donor Opus 2!

Views from the Balcony

Here are some photos of Organ Donor at the San Diego Maker Faire 2015 in the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, taken from the balconies above the main show floor. This is an angle we rarely get to see! These were taken on the rainy Sunday morning, when the crowds were thin.

We were asked to keep the aisles clear, so all the long pipes were oriented in the same direction, keeping the layout more compact than usual. This looks a lot like one of our earliest concept drawings of how the pipes would be arranged.

The show floor at the Nat included the luxury of a small cafe, with coffee.

Museums need to have crowd-control stanchions in stock. Here they are keeping people from walking into the long pipes. The railroad track at the lower right is our AC power cord gaffer-taped to the floor. On the small table next to the console you can see the Adafruit UNTZtrument sequencer, connected to one of the four new external MIDI ports on the Organelle.

Here is most of the show floor in the central atrium of the museum, featuring lots of other booths on the zone theme of "Families, Kids, Fun!" This is only a fraction of what was available in the zone (that is, in the Natural History Museum), and it was only one of fourteen zones scattered throughout the park. Organ Donor doesn't look quite so big in this context.

For this deployment we added a 12 foot square patch of padded flooring to our bag of tricks, based on experience with flooring provided for us at the San Diego County Fair. It protects the Museum's floor, but mainly it makes setup and teardown much easier on our knees.

We've also learned a thing or two about getting all this tubing hooked up. Now we sort the tubing by length first, and try to use the shorter tubes at the back of the windchest. This makes for quicker setup and a more orderly result. We set up in record time for this deployment: Friday from 6:30pm to 11pm, and Saturday morning from 8:00am to 9:30am, for a total of about six hours, some of which was spent waiting for the dinosaurs to be moved out of the way.

Great Press from 2015 San Diego Maker Faire

We got some great press! Sol Diego's Organ Donor made the top 10 on Make Magazine for what to see at the 2015 San Diego Maker Faire.


http://makezine.com/2015/10/02/bots-flames-battleships-converge-maker-faire-san-diego/

Organ Donor is currently showing at Maker Faire at Balboa Park 10am-6pm October 3-4. 

http://sdmakerfaire.org

Come see us and dozens of other amazing and inspirational projects! 

Organ Donor Successfully Completes Deployment at Burning Man

Organ Donor successfully completed a deployment at Burning Man 2015 as part of Sol Diego's Wonderlust Arcade installation. The five-day deployment was located with 28 other regional projects under tents at the base of The Man. The “Midway” was open 24 hours a day from event start until 5pm Friday before the burn.

The Wonderlust Midway installation included a forced perspective building and a variety of arcade and midway games and a Zoltar booth. Games were designed and built by members of the Sol Diego team. An article about the forced perspective construction and the games can be found at:

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-14497-sol-diego-brings-immersive-art-to-burning-man.html

Setup took Organ Donors Paul and Abraxas about 8 hours over two days to complete, including ferrying components and tools out to the Midway (with a 5 mph speed limit). Conditions were windy and dusty, with visibility falling to zero at times. Organ Donor setup had to work with and around all the other teams setting up their art installations.

Substantial changes to the console and software were made from the previous deployment. A new console design was introduced. The minimum desired software functionality was completed on the second day, about an hour before event start. More ambitious software plans, including touchscreen support and graphical user interface features, would have to wait for a later deployment.

The new organ console (version 2.0) improved stability and function. Sturdy legs from IKEA, a cut down IKEA tabletop, and a custom laser-cut cabinet were key elements of the new console, replacing the lightweight folding stage stand and small custom control panel. The console would no longer tip over (or blow away!) as easily, and had improved aesthetics. The two manuals (that is, organ keyboards) and MIDI combiner and coupler management software were carried over from version 1.0 of the console. Version 2.0 added a sheet music stand, an LCD touch-screen, a selector knob, and a laser-engraved diagram to label and explain the stops and coupler buttons. The touch-screen and selector knob were managed by a Raspberry Pi 2 with software written in Python, and the active coupler diagram was managed by an Arduino MEGA 2560.

No substantial changes were made to the pipes, racks, windchest, or blower box. A minor rearrangement of the pipe positions around the rack was necessary to accommodate the shape of the limited space available.

The first failure was with the windchest, which is made of laser-cut acrylic. The front bottom left edge of the windchest leaked during the first pressurization. While the proper solvent-based acrylic cement could be purchased from Reno, that would involve a lengthy trip. Fortunately, Organ Donor Bigun had acrylic cement in his kit. We borrowed a tube, applied the cement, and clamped the windchest closed. This seam held for the duration of the event, possibly because we left the clamps in place. Organ Donor Bigun recommended the addition of a square acrylic rod glued along the seam on the inside of the windchest as a reinforcement. Since the seam is somewhat long, this reinforcement would reduce the amount of flex that probably caused the seam to pop.

The second failure was of both keyboards. When tested after a few hours of dust storm during setup, about half the keys on both manuals were no longer working. We suspected dust fouling the contacts inside the keyboard. With the dust storm continuing and worsening, the keyboards were removed and taken back to Copper Home, Organ Donor's support trailer at Wonderlust Camp. The keyboards were disassembled and inspected. Each key has a series of blue rubber boots that provide domes for each key to press down upon. A contact beneath each dome is actuated when the dome is compressed. Dust had worked its way beneath the rubber boots. The factory design looked more than adequate for normal conditions, but wasn't up to being inundated with playa dust.

A repair was proposed. We would thoroughly clean the contacts and the rubber boots, then use silicone sealant to completely seal the dust boots to the circuit board. The rest of the interior of the keyboard would be allowed to collect dust. Since the rest of the keyboard consisted of mechanical action and the components on the circuit board, confidence was high that the repair would work.

Both dusty keyboards, and the clean pair of backup keyboards, were treated with silicone sealant. In order to replace the dust boots, tool improvisation was required. The rubber plugs that anchor the dust boots would not fit back into the holes by finger pressure. Very small holes were observed at the top of each of the rubber plugs/feet. An unwound paper clip worked perfectly to refit the rubber anchor feet. The strip of dust boots was placed in the correct position, then the paper clip gently pressed into the hole over the top of each plug/foot. The foot then slipped into the hole with no difficulty.

Photos can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/w5nyv/albums/72157658511444682

After the keyboards were treated with sealant, they were returned to the console in the Midway. On the final day, one of the repaired keyboards failed, with just two keys no longer responding to key presses. This was swapped out for one of the backup keyboards. This keyboard worked the rest of the day until close of Midway. The other repaired keyboard lasted the entire event without failures. Later examination showed that we left gaps in the silicone sealant at each of the places where keys failed.

Software functionality for the Midway exhibit consisted of two modes, keyboard and jukebox. Jukebox mode was where Organ Donor played files from the songs directory in the Raspberry Pi. Keyboard mode was where the participant played the keyboard. Participants could play the keyboard at any time, but keyboard mode turned off any MIDI signals being sent to the windchest from the Raspberry Pi.

The Organ Donor received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Conservatory students, amateur musicians, and people that don't have any experience playing a keyboard all were encouraged to play Organ Donor.

One participant, Anthony Decognito, made up songs extemporaneously about other participants. He inquired as to their city of origin, made up a melody, and improvised a song. This was hugely successful.

Several pop-up concerts were held by people that happened to have large amounts of music memorized. The team greatly appreciated the willingness of so many participants that freely shared their talents and training. Crowds gathered in waves to listen and play.

The jukebox mode was freely used. While several lost and found items were recovered, no obvious abuse occurred. While at least one participant used a very unconventional body part to play the keyboard, Organ Donor was unscathed by heavy participant use.

Complete set of photos from the deployment can be found here https://www.flickr.com/photos/w5nyv/albums/72157656113224673

We found that most people didn't really study the coupler diagram, and were generally unwilling to read the verbose text-mode displays on the LCD to understand how to switch between keyboard and jukebox modes. This wasn't entirely surprising, but it did spark some discussion and decisions on how to improve the console for version 3.0.

With some strategic text placement, the coupler diagram could perhaps be improved to the point of not requiring a lot of explanation. During exhibition, it did not take much additional explanation to make the coupler diagram come alive, but the fact that it did take some additional explanation at all means there is room for improvement in this particular interface. Plans are in place to improve this particular interface for San Diego Maker Faire (3-4 October 2015).

For the LCD screen that showed status and gave instructions for jukebox vs. keyboard mode, it was felt that a big image on the screen and callouts on the knob would improve ease of operation.

Upon return to San Diego, the blower box, windchest, and pipes were cleaned with compressed air and damp cloths, and Organ Donor was set up for San Diego Maker Faire improvements.

Anyone interested in the project is welcome to follow along and is invited to consider becoming an Organ Donor. The project needs skills of all types, including machine learning, coding, user interface design, game theory, carpentry, laser cutting, 2D and 3D modeling, 3D printing, and many other areas. Contact Abraxas or Paul by sending a message through this site.

High Tech High Meetup Playlist

Organ Donor is going to be presented at the Maker Faire meetup at High Tech High on 20 June. Here's the playlist for our 5 minute window :+)