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

Morley John morleyroarly at gmail.com
Tue Dec 23 19:59:27 UTC 2008


Jim,

A few comments:

1) Yes, we can replace the batteries. If we go the battery route, we
are prepared to procure two sets of batteries - one to sit on a
charger for a day or two, one to sit in the columns. **We don't want
to swap battery arrays every day**, though - that would majorly suck.
I've maintained battery banks for burning man art installations
before, and it's a huge chore. They're heavy, and a pain to lug
around!  Swapping batteries every 3 days would be optimal. So figure
we would need to design for 30 hours of runtime
(3x10-hours-of-darkness nights, based on civil twilight hours).

2) Windmills aren't really possible, as they would seriously detract
from the column layout. Solar panels atop the columns, 8"x8" square,
are possible but I worry they'd be cost prohibitive, and not really
charge up the batteries enough to make a difference....?

3) We will be casting the columns around hollow cardboard tubes,
allowing for room inside the columns themselves to hold batteries.
They will be protected from the elements, and the playa is a very dry
environment. They're space constrained, though - an 8" column has, at
most, a 5" tube at its center.

4) As for the luminosity, it's hard for me to describe. I'm not
familiar with the technical parameters of lighting, really. I can give
you a comparison, though. If we could power something akin to a single
low-wattage (5watt?) compact fluorescent bulb to light the display,
two very bright strobing lights at the top of the column that would be
visible from 1000 feet, and a handful (say, 15 to 20?) small "accent'
LEDs, I'd be happy. It's the display light I most worry about - a
single Luxeon flat panel seems to be a huge energy draw. I can't
imagine adequately lighting a 12"x8"x8" sculpture, in the middle of
the night in the middle of nowhere, with one LED, even if it is a
luxeon. So we increase to 4 luxeons per column.. that's a lot of
juice!

5) 41 columns. Spacing of the first 11 columns varies from about a
hundred feet up to 1000 feet. Spacing of the last 30 columns is much
tighter - average of 20 feet apart, max 50, min 5.

So, who knows something about running 600 feet of electrical wiring
from a generator? Can it be done without too much decrease in current
over that distance?

We are in the cost proposal stages right now. This will be, hopefully,
funded by the burning man organization, so cost is fairly flexible.
We're looking at a total project budget of at least $8,000. Probably
more like $10k-$12k, what with transportation costs etc. (41 concrete
columns would seem to require a flatbed semi...)

-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



On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:29 AM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>
>   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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>
>
>



More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list