The Machine – Time Lapse of Construction (Foscil audio) from Ian Page-Echols on Vimeo.

If you asked what I was working on during the past year, I could probably tell you that I was “working on The Machine”. While this could sound like a vague reference to “the man” or something of the sort, it was actually a huge collaborative project that I was working on with a bunch of people. This was created for the 2005 Burning Man Festival.

We had people from many professions including contracting, art, realty, party and event creation, shmoozing, welding, computer geekery, audio, engineers, graphic design, multimedia, dance, performance, and some architecture background. This huge structure was community created, community run and used during the event, and then community destroyed at the end of the event.

The short description given to the Burning Man event beforehand:

Made primarily of steel and wooden parts, The Machine (Mach12e) expresses an elusiveness of time and place. Burning Man participants will at first have the opportunity to view the sculpture, a triangulated meta-mechanical temple, in the open vista of the playa. They will explore its isolation, both spatial and emotional. Three elevated drive wheels and housings, a raised rotating central core comprised of a tower of gears and a transmission, and an upper platform that suspends eight articulated kinetic limbs define its multifaceted rust, blue, and gray form.

(wood, steel, nails, screws, cable, gears, rubber belts, hard rubber casters, soft rubber tensioner wheels, belt tensioner/belt rider system to cut down on the belt harmonics caused by the wind, 8 channel audio, olfactory)

View the video on Youtube

I made a little cheapo kids laptop toy into something useful. It’s now got an LCD panel from a PSOne, and I wired up the buttons as a USB keyboard. Makes a nice 40 button clip launcher.

I have been creating visuals for various dj, band, and electronic music gigs since late 2003. I always bring various different video, data, and USB devices to play with and interact with the software. But I tend to have a few regulars. One very useful device is a video preview monitor. You can plug this in to your video mixer to see either the final product if you can’t see the screen easily from where you are located, or you can preview the different feeds before you mix them in with or from whatever is currently playing.

Another thing I bring with me is a MIDI controller with a bunch of dials on it. I use this to control the software that I use. I can use it to change the hue and saturation of the clips, I can use it to mix between the different effects that I currently have available to me. I find more uses for this thing all of the time. This plugs in either via MIDI or through USB.

Another thing that most visual programs can do is take triggers from either music keyboards or standard computer keyboards. It would be nice to have a bigger key to hit.

What I need is a custom device that includes these features and others down the road. And I just happen to have a little kids laptop sitting around waiting to be hacked apart.

Ingredients:
Apple USB Keyboard (just the circuit board and USB cable)
PSOne LCD Monitor (out of casing)
VTech Little Smart Letter Fun (already partially converted)

Directions:

1) Take all electronics out of the original toy laptop, making sure to remember where all the screws went.

2) Figure out where all of the various wires lead to inside of the toy. Do this also for the USB keyboard. Below are also a chart and a visual representation of where all these leads need to connect to for my specific devices.

3) You are going to have to create your own board like in figure 2, but instead, match the wires to what the USB keyboard is expecting. It’s a fair amount of work.

4) Finish the LCD monitor part first, as this is easy compared to the rest and you can have something useful while you work on the new circuit board.

Related Links:
PSone LCD – VDR Wiki
bit-tech Forums – PSOne Mod