[Noisebridge-discuss] An introduction, and a plea for help with electrical systems

jim jim at well.com
Tue Dec 23 19:29:08 UTC 2008


   your project seems interesting to me. i have 
some experience with low voltage systems and 
electronics as well as having worked some years 
as an electrician. i would like to help out. 
   it would help to have exact specs for the 
power needs. how many columns? what distance 
apart? what luminosity needed? describe the 
overall installation from the spectators' 
point of view, please. anything requiring 
power other than lights? 
   batteries are the likely right power source. 
in general terms, the battery should have 
sufficient capacity to provide power for about 
24 hours. recharging the battery should be 
done by solar panels and/or windmill generators. 
recharging devices should be powerful enough to 
recharge sufficiently within six hours on a dim, 
windless day. 
   is it possible for someone manually to 
replace batteries at some time during the days? 
if so, batteries may be swapped out and 
recharged at some other location. consider an 
electronic circuit that manages how the system 
uses power along with managing recharging. 
   from a mechanical point of view, water and 
sunlight are enemies: wires and cables should 
be UV insensitive and connections sufficiently 
water-resistant not to allow electrical 
conduction between a battery's two terminals. 
given that you're casting the columns, you 
can probably have a cavity that provides 
appropriate shelter and exposure. 
   all of the above is doable with standard 
stuff. the difficulty will likely be trade-offs 
in parts capabilities vs costs. i.e. 
MORE_MONEY == MORE_EASY 
jim at well dot com 




On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 10:00 -0800, Morley John wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> I'm Morley. I already know some of you (Rubin, Audrey, who else?)
> through NIMBY/Interpretive Arson. To the rest of you, greetings! I've
> been by the space once to check it out and was quite inspired. Glad to
> see people throwing their energies into all sorts of fascinating
> endeavours :)
> 
> I write not just to introduce myself, but to introduce a project I'm
> working on, and to hopefully recruit some interested folks to help
> out.
> 
> The project, working title Timescale, is a scaled representation (time
> scaled to distance) of the last 4.57 billion years of the history of
> the planet Earth. It will be installed at Burning Man in 2009. The
> installation will measure exactly one mile from end to end, starting
> with the Cryptic Era at the beginning of the formation of the planet,
> and finishing with the Holocene Epoch, the 11,430 years since the last
> ice age.  The beginning of each Precambrian Era and Cambrian Epoch
> (see: http://www.stratigraphy.org/chus.pdf ) will be marked with a
> concrete column, 8"x8" square, rising up from the playa. Atop the
> column will be a clear polycarbonate box that holds a sculpture
> evoking some element of geologic/biologic/evolutionary/climate history
> from that period of geologic time.
> 
> The columns will be fabricated at the new NIMBY2 - anyone who wants to
> learn about casting lightweight concrete, you're welcome to come help
> out!  Fabrication will begin in earnest this spring.
> 
> But the more pressing issue, and the one I suspect is more up the
> alley of folks on this list, is how to power these columns.  For each
> column we'll need to light the sculpture (luxeons? 5W compact
> fluorescents?), light the explanatory text on the sides of the
> columns, and power some sort of strobe/floodlight atop the column so
> you can see them from afar.  In the Precambrian, there's up to 1000
> feet between columns. (The entire Cambrian, on the other hand,
> representing the vast majority of the evolution of Earth's biological
> diversity, is 660 feet long).
> 
> Sets of small 7AH to 12AH batteries in each column? (No, we will not
> put a deep cycle next to each column, they must be stand-alone). A
> generator and a mile of trenched wiring? A generator powering just the
> Cambrian, batteries in the Precambrian? A quick calculation indicates
> that four luxeons will burn out a 7AH battery in about two hours,
> leading me to think that pure battery power is untenable. What we
> really need is an electrician to help us figure all of this out.
> 
> I am far from an electrician - as you might have guessed, I'm
> primarily a geologist.  If any of you have experience with such things
> and would like to help us figure out our power systems, we'd be most
> grateful. (We being myself and my co-conspirator, Flint Hahn). And of
> course, down the line we'll need plenty of help constructing the
> actual lighting assemblies for each column. And if anyone wants to
> claim a column and create a sculpture, great! We'll be putting out the
> general call for column artists in a few months, once we have funding
> secured.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I look forward to meeting more of you in the future!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Morley
> 
> 
> "How do I stop being afraid? Know that there is no safety anywhere.
> There never was and there never will be. Stop looking for it. Live
> with a fierce intent to waste nothing of yourself or life." - Ann
> Shulgin
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> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> 




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