Urban Visuals » processing

Millenium Tower Interactive Model

Nathan — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:15:57 +0000

In November, 2007 Urban Visuals developed a custom control system for an architectural model of a 60 story tower being built in San Fransisco. The Millenium Tower sales centre featured a tower nearly 7 feet tall with individual LED lights for each of its 400 suites. Additional rear projection panels hung from the ceiling afforded displayed 360 degree views from each of the the floors of the building.

The installation was controlled by a touch screen PC which communicated via Processing (processing.org) and custom built hardware to interface with the 800 wires exiting the base of the model. It was programmed to illuminate an individual suite, a whole floor, and whole sections of the building — the building is divided into three product offerings.

Science World Consumption Exhibit

Nathan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:46:30 +0000

As the centerpiece for the recently remodelled electricity exhibit, the Consumption Game that we built for Science world commands attention. The goal of the game is to save electricity by turning off appliances as they display on the screens. It’s a race against time as players run around the exhibit, hitting the buttons below each display to deactivate the appliance. Meanwhile the LED tube displays remaining electricity, and the screens on the central column display remaining electricity and elapsed time.

This exhibit blends standard hands on game play with a digital component that allows for the game to be adjusted and updated with simple software changes. The software and media driven interface will allow us the ability to create a completely different game in the future, with minimal hardware changes.

The game was written using the Processing framework for Java. The exhibit uses a number of custom interface elements, including 14 Digitalview media players controlled by RS-232, 15 practically indestructible buttons to start the game and “turn off” appliances, and a custom acrylic LED column with 5 channels of RGB LEDs, all controlled by a Mac mini. Additionally, the unit can re controlled remotely and all system variables and timers can be configured over a web interface.

St Regis Tower Interactive Model

Nathan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:06:01 +0000

Urban Visuals created another interactive model control system for the St. Regis development in Las Vegas. The 50 story high rise condo will be located between the Palazzo and the Venetian hotel on the Vegas Strip, and the preview sales centre is in one of the penthouse suites of the Palazzo hotel, overlooking the building site, as well as much of Las Vegas.

The control system uses an Arduino control board and two custom built 256 channel LED control boxes. The Flash based touch interface (built by Lightroom), communicates with a Processing application which sends commands to the ardiuno and the LED controllers.

The fantastic model was built by The Model Shop in Vancouver, and included individual LEDs for each of it’s 422 suites. Each suite can be individually illuminated, as well as each floor, groups of several floors and random suite illumination (as shown). Light animations also light the entire building suite by suite or floor by floor.

The touch screen with the model in the reflection.

Nathan working on the model.