Premise
Google’s Be Internet Awesome initiative was developed to promote online safety and positive social engagement in school aged children. They tasked Deeplocal with creating an event featuring a number of exhibits to teach school-aged guests about that initiative. Included in these exhibits were four interactive games:
Don’t Fall for Fake
A game where users were presented with a stack of cards, each picturing a different email. Users would then drop the cards into slots identifying the emails as either legitimate or spam. After each correctly identified card, the user would then be given a chance to launch a ball (representing trash) from a cannon through a number of targets on the wall.
Secure Your Secrets
A game where users placed blocks, each labeled with a different letter or character, into slots on a wall to build a secure password. If the password was considered strong, a success animation would play on a screen, but if it was weak, all the blocks would be pushed out of the wall in various patterns.
It’s Cool to Be Kind
A game consisting of a large 7×7′ tabletop screen with a player station in each corner. Each station had a physical oversized pinball-esque plunger that users could pull, aim and release to launch onscreen attacks against baddies out to spread bad vibes on the internet.
Share with Care
A game where users placed various physical triangular blocks in a tabletop grid overlaying a screen in order to re-direct a digital, on-screen laser beam toward a target.
My Role
Don’t Fall for Fake
I designed a control system for three revolver-style air cannons. Each air cannon was comprised of a 26-chamber cylinder, a series of sensors and a solenoid valve that released compressed air to launch a ball through an upright, pivoting aim-able barrel. I specced the TOF sensor, the motor controller and motors, positioning switches and the solenoid release valve. I designed the controller PCB and wrote firmware to rotate the cylinder motor, detect the ball, ensure positioning and launch the ball appropriately. Additionally I designed and fabricated mechanical mounts for the sensors and switches and prototyped the drive wheel to spin the cylinder. Lastly, I physically installed the exhibit at the event in San Antonio.
Secure Your Secrets
I designed the control system for a game where players could build a password using various blocks (each labeled with a letter or special character). After placing a sequence of blocks on the wall, the game would identify the passwords as weak or strong resulting in the blocks being pushed off the wall in various patterns. This all consisted of two separate systems connected to a main computer. The first system included 20 NFC readers connected to the main computer via USB. The NFC readers identified individual blocks and communicated with the software front-end which evaluated the strength of the password. The second system consisted of an Arduino connected to a 24-channel I2C relay board used to control and animated 20 solenoids. I created the overall system architecture, speccing the NFC tags/readers, microcontrollers, relay board and solenoids. I wrote the firmware to control the relay board as well as the timing of the solenoid animations. I also physically installed the exhibit at the event in San Antonio.
It’s Cool to Be Kind/Share with Care
I performed on-the-ground hardware troubleshooting at the event, replacing failing surface mount connectors and wiring as well as hacking together various off-the-shelf LED rings when mechanical stress caused solder joints to fail.