Four years later

A break was taken. Some financial concerns and self-doubt got in the way. It continued to be worked on, now and then. It morphed into an event last year that didn't happen.

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.

First Impressions

I like to bring people into the room without explaining it and then see their reactions. Then I try to explain it and see the reaction to that. Having shown about 10 people so far, it's almost worth building it just to see the various responses.

I've got everything from laughing to staring to weirded out to wow this is awesome what is it.  Justin B saw it and when I explained what it was he asked if I needed content creators. YESSSSSSSSS!  I'm glad a not even half-baked prototype with a poor elevator pitch can inspire people to want to be involved.

So yeah, if you want to create content anyone... let's talk!

The current elevator pitch is something like: It's this room you go into, you have a bunch of experiences and then you leave enlightened.   Other suggestions??

All Benches Done. Speakers up next..

I got the third bench done and cleaned the space up some....looking good!

Next up is getting the 6 speaker surround sound up. The wires aren't long enough so I've got to see about getting extensions. Not sure if that will make the sounds quieter or not. 

Here you can see the front of the room. A speaker on each side, subwoofer in the middle and a center speaker. To put the small ones in the upper corners of the room I'm going to maybe need to build or get a thing to left up the subwoofer because it is attached via some weird cable to the left speaker and I'm not sure about extending that cable. Hope I can figure this one out quickly...  Also I have figured out how I will attached the speakers but that will come in a later post.

Screen up

With the help of my friend Emily Summerfield I got the white fabric up for the screen.

It had a bunch of folds and wrinkles when it arrived from UPS. I tested ironing them out but that took forever so I just through it in the washer and dryer and it came out much better. Here it is attached only at the top of the wall with staples. I'm sure I could get it flatter, but we're not going for perfection on the prototype here.... we're going for finished!

Two Benches Done

I got two benches made, but ran out of wood for the third. Went down to home depot and got some and left it like this.

Here's what it's looking like from the entrance. The rug was to protect the floor some, but it's adding some needed character.

sdf

Todo list

Here's the todo list for the week:

• Put the benches together (got the wood this weekend, waiting on amazon parts)
• Put the screen up
• Build projector holder (done)
• Put the sound system in (maybe.. not sure if it will work or what kind of cables I'll need)
• Meet with Christine Chen (done)
• Try some editing software
• Hang black plastic with lights on ceiling
• Get others to help (this week or next)
• Move more stuff out of the ER room into the living room or elsewhere (drums and keyboard #2, I'm looking at you...)
• Pull out the scripts and review them. Try not to cringe on how strange an idea this is. 
• Keep going.

Looking for help

Because I am doubting the revenue of the calendars this year, I really need to hustle on the eureka room and get it out there. I'm hoping to have a full prototype by the end of March, maybe April. The big question now is the films and how long those are going to take me to hack together.

There's a lot of stuff that needs done still and if anyone wants to help on any of it, I would love the help.  Areas include:

• Build out. Not just construction but decoration and ideas on construction.
• Music. At first I'll likely just find songs that seem to fit the scripts and see how that works, but if you want to write some instrumental music (on your own, since if I have to do it I'll just borrow recorded music) then great.
• Scripts. You can review mine or write your own.
• Figuring out where the hell we'll put this thing, how we will put it and what sorts of legal bs we have to deal with to get it out there.
• MORAL SUPPORT. If you just want to come by and hang out and tell me it's going to be awesome, that would be super helpful. This is a ridiculous idea in many ways and some days when I'm looking at the homemade plastic room thing I have in my house I just think.. ugh.
• Supplies. If you have some kind of interesting lights or chairs or something let me know.