Projection test at BCO

First testing where made today, to find possible spots inside BCO to project on. A possible room could be a large round one at the end the castle. After experimenting with the projector, the possibility of a ceiling projection came up.
Unfortunately, the claw for the ceiling montage of a projector is currently not available, so an alternative has to be found. However, those issues will be addressed after the final place for installation inside the castle is found.

The first test show, that with the projector available, it will be very hard to create an immersive space, as the lens ratio of the projector is casual and the ceilings in Blackrock Castle fairly low.

Equipment updates

A new MacPro was gained for the project. Ubuntu 12 was installed and Stellarium and Processing runs excellent. Two video outputs are available, so enough computer resources should now be available to set up the installation.
Additionally two old eMacs could be gained from Crawford College, as they where going to dump them anyway. The screens can be used for possible instructions, webcam feeds or data visualizations.

For the projections however, only one casual projector could be gained. An Epson wide angle lens projector from Crawford College was not available. With only one projector, the preferred way of visualizing the telescope data will not be possible, so quite some work on visualization sketches in Processing cannot be used now for the project.

At BCO

From this week on, the working place is moved from the apartment to Blackrock Castle Observatory.

Desk space is available as well as plenty of technical equipment, so everything is good to go to set up the installation. The equipment available so far will be transported to BCO bit by bit. The final space inside the castle itself will be determined by this or the next week.

Floor Visuals

If there will be the possibility of an additional projection onto the floor projection for the data visualization, this is what these visuals might look like:

Screensaver

As the installation won't be constantly in use, the idea came up to create some sort of a screensaver or a demo to show all the features of Stellarium and things to show. For this, a Processing sketch was created, that controls Stellarium to randomly activate different visuals while flying through the star field.
Here's a demonstration of the screensaver:
(unfortunately it runs fairly laggy, as the screen recording required quite a lot of calculation power)

The code of that processing sketch will be integrated in the sketch interpreting and translating the Kinect input to control Stellarium. When no user was recognized for a certain amount of time, the controls (simulated key press functions) will change to the screensaver until a new user enters the installation.

Equipment List

Here's the equipment list of what is needed to implement the installation in Blackrock Castle Observatory and to set up a space at Sullivan's Quay. Detailed updates of what of which of those components will be available and detailed descriptions of technical specs and brands will follow when the available equipment is received in a few weeks.

a Mac Pro

possibly 3x Projectors

• Epson EB410We Projector + cables (from Crawford College of Design)
• 3M 62x Projector + cables
• any small projector + cables for Sullivan's Quay

16:9 Widescreen Monitor + cables (like the Dell ones from B120)

any iMac for Sullivan's Quay

5.1 Surround Sound System for BCO and any Stereo Sound System for Sullivan's Quay + all required cables

probably 2x RGB to DVI adapter (or vice versa)

Router (with wireless if possible)

3x Ethernet Cables

2x Power plug Multicore

Allocating calculation resources

As the project won't run on any single machines I have at the moment alone, different programs and tasks have to allocated to the different machines available.
To do so, CPU and RAM usage of the different programs on different machines and operating system have been review, to get the best combination and allocation of computer resources for the tasks, that have to be performed. The machines, available at the moment are a Dell workstation (Linux and Windows XP) and a Sony Vaio sub-notebook (Windows 7) (also see here).
The results are the following:
When it comes to Stellarium, it obviously runs best on the Dell workstation and a lot faster on Linux than XP, which is not really surprising since Stellarium is a Linux project. Dell and Linux would be the preferred setup for executing Stellarium.
The processing sketch for visualizations that will be projected onto Stellarium run quite fluent next to Stellarium on the Dell workstation with Linux, however it quite drives it to its limits. But the complete graphical output of the floor projection could be fluently executed by the Dell workstation, it should be its only responsibility though.

The processing sketch for accessing the Microsoft Kinect runs with the openNI drivers on Windows at the moment (Linux will be probably be tested in the future as well). It doesn't require any graphical calculation power and runs just fine on the Sony Vaio notebook. However, body scanning like e.g. searching for the user's hand can take more time, when less resources are available. A fluent interaction is vital for the project, so when the Vaio notebook will be responsible for the Kinect interaction, it should possibly not be given any other tasks.

The animated poster processing sketches run on all the machines and but require a lot of resources. It won't be possible to run that sketch next to Stellarium in the Linux Dell machine and neither on the Sony Vaio notebook together with the Kinect sketch, without having either a non-fluent visual output or interaction.

The animated poster has to run on a separate machine, any OS would be fine. It does run fluent on all the iMacs in the CIT multimedia labs when executed alone. Getting one of those to display the poster is an option.
After reviewing all the CPU and RAM usage, it can be concluded that basically one more machine is required to perfectly execute the project. A perfect addition to the current machines would be a single high spec desktop machine, like on of the Mac Pros from the Multimedia Department of CIT. The Dell Workstation and a fast Mac Pro with both running Linux should provide sufficient calculation power to run the complete project.
The Sony Vaio Notebook could be used for working on the run or necessarily for the Sullivan's Quay exhibition. As it is just a sub-notebook, it is probably better not to use for a large museum installation.

A full equipment list of what is needed for the installation at Blackrock Castle Observatory and the Final Year's Exhibition at Sullivan's Quay will be posted soon.