But the original idea won't leave my head so I've got no choice but to just do it.
Since last summer, after the shelved attempt at "Happiness Interactive Lab" I decided to start making video animations for a room I would build. Maybe I'll talk more about HI Lab in a later post. The main thing to know is that I wasn't able to explain the tone to people and everyone seemed to have their own take on what it was despite my best efforts. It was also getting into the woo-woo which I don't want to do do.
So what is it now?
I want it to be a mysterious box. A magical room. Run by no human beings, just a menu of options you choose from, swipe your card and the door opens. The menu options range from helpful science-based practices to increase your long-term well-being to absurdist practices based in no science that just help your short-term joy and happiness.
So what does that look like?
An 8x8x8 white box with a chair (or chairs) inside of it.
Ok, this is a roofless room with a ladder not a chair. But I didn't have an early photo of the roof and chair.
I built out the room with whiteboard and framing and used a tv and some ambient tv-responsive lights. They really weren't bright enough. The photos I took of them looked good, but it really wasn't that impressive inside:
These look cool, right?
Unfortunately it looked more like this...
Then I thought I'd drop a few strips of LEDs in to get the color. That didn't look so good either:
Ok, so then I thought what about a wall simiar to the "magic table" idea prototype Mickey made for me:
Ok, now we're getting somewhere. That's some good color under that sheet under the glass. But it used a whole strip of LEDs.
So at this point I think "why not make the walls all LEDs"? I didn't know what that would entail but it would look pretty cool I was sure.
I had to find the right kind of translucent plastic for this. Diffusion, strength, finish, cost... so many choices in plastics. I ordered about 10 samples from online and local vendors:
Once I got the translucent plastic (easier said than done since I had no idea what it was I was looking for), I put some lights behind it. Wow a whole wall would look amazing I thought...
So ok, I want LED walls. No idea what that's going to cost (answer.. a lot) but I really need to either go for it or never get rid of this idea so I decided to just do it.
But then there was the issue of the TV:
The tiny little TV. Meh. The idea all along was to project on the back wall (so much easier said than done) so I started looking at projectors... and looking and looking.
The only really good way to know how good a projector is is to buy it and see. Which is what I did. And I returned about 5 of them to Amazon.
They wrote me an email asking why I was returning all this stuff to help with the "Customer Service".
At first I thought front projection, I have no room in the house for a rear projection. But then I foudn short throw projectors. But then they gave me rainbow effect or were too loud or had screen door effect or some other issue.
Finally I ended up going rear projection (no light particles in the room, yay!) and a slightly longer than short-throw projector. And it didn't cost me an arm and a leg, like the $25,000 Sony one.
I also had to test different fabrics out to figure out how to project through and I also wanted it to be a solid surface like the rest of the room is to the viewer. So I got a clear acrylic sheet and swapped out the top whiteboard panel (easier said than done!)
Oh but now you might notice that the image doesn't go all the way up to the ceiling like things are supposed to do in the future. Meh.
So there was a *lot* of moving walls and ceilings around until the new rear-projection to the ceiling got closer to what I wanted:
Here's the rear projection screen I made:
A better look now..
Now back to the LED plastic walls...
Then.. how are we going to make it all stand up? Rails? Grooves in wood like this?
I'm still not sure today... I think next week we'll work that out.
Oh what about attaching LEDs to the walls? Well those flimsy chipboard whiteboards are not going to do well. So I needed to get some 4x8 plywood. And some white paint.
Oh yeah, and a friend with a truck to pick this all up. (Thanks Matt &Vianca!)
I painted the boards outside and then hung them up. After taking the other walls down. (I've got a lot of unused 4x8 materials in my house now...)
Did pretty well with these new walls actually:
Have I mentioned that I have no real mechanical skills to speak of? Or that I really have no interest in building things with my hands? If I wasn't a slave to the idea of this I probably would never have owned a jigsaw or second screwdriver in my entire life.
Oh but now back to the plastic walls the LEDs will shine through..
I happened to notice that the plastic I bought was pretty reflective. See how it reflects the screen here:
It's even more pronounced when you are in there. It's practicaly a mirror.
At first I was dismayed and told Noah (the guy putting in all the LEDs) and he said we could sand them down or light the walls up a bit to offset it.
But then after a few days I thought we might capitalize on the infinity effect and I am excited to see what that looks like once we get it all going.
Oh.. sound!
I bought a bunch of in-ceiling speakers:
Then returned them:
It was overkill.
Instead, I got a small white sound bar and subwoofer for the front and will use some existing logitech 5.1 system I have in the back (since it is black).
Back to the LEDs Currently they are getting installed by Noah and Danielle. We had ordered 30's but got 60's. What does that mean? Twice the density of lights we had asked for. That gives us more lights but we have to upgrade some of the power-related components.
And today they started getting straightened out a bit more and are starting to look pretty awesome:
Reading over my 2014 posts makes me want to cringe at times.. "I hope to get this out on the streets by summer". Oof. I debated taking them down to make myself look better but thought it might be helpful to someone to see my whole process and not just the good and polished parts.
