In March of 2014, I visited Port Harcourt, Nigeria to create some short films telling the story of how SFCC is affecting change in that part of the world.

I visited Nigeria in 2009, but I amazingly neglected to remember just how brutally hot and relentlessly humid this African nation is. During the 2014 trip, the high temperatures and humidity caused my Nikon D-3400 camera to overheat and shut down on multiple occasions. I have read about “operational temperature ranges” in equipment manuals, however, I have never experienced any piece of equipment fail because of extreme temperatures.

So as I prepared to return to Nigeria in early 2015, I began researching how I might be able to avoid overheating the camera by using some sort of cooling device. I was hoping to find an existing product I could simply buy online and have shown up the next day. But I had no luck finding such a product.

I expanded my search and I ran across a site dedicated to Astronomy Photography. Evidently, creating super long exposure photographs with a DSLR causes the camera’s sensors to heat up. And having hot photo sensors creates a grainy effect in the final photo. Thus, there are a handful of astronomy blogs describing how they made various cooling devices in order to create grain-free photos of deep space.

The main cooling component is a Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC). Here is how Wikipedia describes the component:

Thermoelectric coolers operate by the Peltier effect (which also goes by the more general name thermoelectric effect). The device has two sides, and when DC current flows through the device, it brings heat from one side to the other, so that one side gets cooler while the other gets hotter. The “hot” side is attached to a heat sink so that it remains at ambient temperature, while the cool side goes below room temperature.

Diagram of how the camera cooler worked while in moderate ambient temperatures (below 90˚F)

Since one side of a TEC gets cold and the other side gets hot, the heat from the “hot side” of the TEC must be displaced in order to have the unit act as a cooling device. To accomplish this, I attached a heat sink to the TEC along with a small electric fan to create an exhaustive air flow.

I then attached the “cold side” of the TEC to a thin copper frame that wrapped around the camera. I fabricated this frame using thin, malleable copper sheeting. The idea was to have the TEC cool the highly conductive copper thus distributing the cooler temperatures around the camera.

In order to keep the cold temperature close to the camera, I worked with a local seamstress to fabricate an enclosure made from insulation fabric. The enclosure included two clear polyurethane “windows” so I could still see the camera’s LCD displays.

I used a simple metal project box to hold the electronics. I modified it with holes for the power switch and LED, a digital thermometer, and exhaust vents. A portable power supply (used to recharge mobile phones) powered the device.

Once it was assembled, it weighed about 1.5 pounds, not insignificant when it would have to be carried every moment for a week in the African heat.

Diagram of how the camera cooler worked while in higher ambient temperatures (above 96˚F)

The final step was to do a real-world test. The last thing I wanted to do was to try this out for the first time in Nigeria. So, I moved our Dyson portable heater into our small guest water closet, jacked up the thermostat, closed the door and waited for the heat to build up.

I set up the camera rig exactly as it would be used in Nigeria and started recording video. As the small room turned into an oversized Easy Bake Oven, the Camera Cooler did a great job of keeping the temperature inside the enclosure at least 10°F cooler than the outside ambient temperature.

However, as the ambient room temperature passed 96°F, the interior temperature began to significantly rise. Within a few minutes, the internal temperature matched the external, ambient temperature. The device had failed and thus, it did not make the trip to Nigeria.

As I reviewed the Camera Cooler’s design, I considered the fact that for the TEC to act as a cooler, the heat it generates must be displaced. When the ambient temperature is cooler than the exhaust temperature, the cool air being pulled through the heat sink enables the generated heat to be easily removed. However, as the ambient temperature rose and eventually matched the exhaust temperature, it became physically impossible to cool the heat sink.

Even though it eventually failed, it was still a fun experiment.

Fabricating the copper frame. Modifying the heat sink to match the size of the TEC and mounting it on the copper frame. Wiring the electrical components. The modified project box before painting it. The completed cooler components before adding the insulated fabric enclosure. Insulated fabric enclosure concept. The completed camera cooler.

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When I used to work at SFCC, we did a lot of building usage events. There were easily a dozen groups each week that use our building free of charge. We built the building for the community and we want them to use it!

The building is rather large and can be difficult to navigate if you have never visited the campus. With this in mind, we decided it would be helpful to create a way-finding kiosk that would help people quickly locate their event and destination.

I looked at some commercial turn-key options that included all of the hardware, content management systems and signage player apps, but the pricing was outside out our budget. So I began to look around for an alternative solution. One of the most intriguing services was DigitalSignage.com. While it looks like a fine service, in the end, the workflow just didn’t quite work for us.

So I decided to create a custom solution from the ground up. The elements required would be a large touchscreen LCD panel with a stand, a small computer and a custom Drupal website to display the content.

For the LCD, I found the GVision 46″ Touch Screen from ProVantage. It was the right size for the right price (about $1600) and it was plug-and-play simple to setup.

Assembling the kiosk stand. Programming the Drupal kiosk website while using the LCD touch screen as a reference monitor. The kiosk brains: a small Asus Windows 8 PC. The PC's home: a simple steel box was painted black. The completed & installed kiosk.

By the way, GVision had EXCELLENT customer service and I would highly recommend their products on that fact alone. I spoke with a human without having to go through any phone tree menus. The rep was extremely nice and gave me his direct phone number should I have further requests. He even emailed us some example HTML files they use to display content on the GVision LCDs at conventions they attend. That was above and beyond!

We bought a basic LCD stand from Displays2Go with wheels so we could easily move the kiosk if needed. To store the computer out of reach of curious fingers, I found this very basic locking steel box on Amazon. We painted it black using truck-bed paint.

Stop Touching the Touch Screen!

We quickly realized there are downsides to having a DIY kiosk running Windows 8 and a Chrome browser. Even though we were running Chrome in “kiosk mode”, curious little fingers would find ways to tap their way into “view source code” screens, other websites, and even the Microsoft Paint app.

One day I was walking through the lobby and I overheard a staffer asking a curious adolescent to “stop touching the touch screen.”  That statement’s irony cracked me up! But I quickly realized I need to add some limitations to the system.

I was able to quickly prevent access to other websites by creating a firewall setting making the ONLY site a user can access is the Drupal site. For the other rogue apps people were accessing, I either deleted the app altogether or denied permission to access the apps.

Preventing access to the “Right Click” menu and the “View Source” feature took a bit of programming. I created a jQuery (JavaScript) function that captures the “Right Click” event (on the touch screen LCD this happens when you tap two fingers at the same time). The function then kills the event that would display the context menu (the “right click” menu) and instead shows a menu with a single option to reload the page.

I have yet to find a way to prevent users from doing the “swipe from the far right edge” that display the Windows 8 system menu, but fewer people know of this feature. Overall, we have had significantly fewer issues with finding random windows displayed since I made these updates.

The Drupal Kiosk Website

The photo to the right shows the basic features of the site including:
(A) Today’s date and time.
(B) A list of “Today’s Events” with pop-up wayfinding maps.
(C) A basic ad loop.
(D) A seven day weather forecast.

The main focus of the kiosk is the list of “Today’s Events”. This is driven by a list of events an SFCC staffer maintains in the Drupal site’s admin section.

For the Drupal coders interested, I created an “Events” content type with all of the required fields along with a custom View that displays only the events happening “today”. The buttons with the room names are each bound to a matching image of a “You Are Here” map of the building highlighting the quickest route to the room. Check out the video above to see this in action. The map automatically disappears after 20 seconds to prevent abandoned pop-ups remaining on the kiosk. Also, the entire kiosk display automatically refreshes on the screen at the top of every hour allowing most current information to be displayed.

Th ad loop is also a View driven by a custom content type. Specific ads can have optional expiration dates so they will disappear after an event has happened. Also, the size of these graphics is 1280×720, the same size we use in the auditorium. I used this resolution so our communications team does not have to create another version of the ad.

Possible Future Features

Like any other project, as soon as I complete version 1, I am already thinking of ways to improve it. Some possible features I may be adding to the digital signage include:

• Having individual events disappear from the “Today’s Events” list once the event ends.
• Having a “more info” pop-up window for the individual ad loop graphics
• Adding a “Today’s Specials” graphic and pop-up for our cafe.
• Maybe having a pop-up window display when one of the social media icons is clicked. The pop-up would contain a feed for that specific social media account. A possible hazard here is having links in the feed that people could click on and get to other sites.

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In March 2014, SFCC was in a message series called Lost Art: Rediscovering the Forgotten Stories. We had artists paint during every service over a 6-week time span. I was very happy to be allowed to paint one of the murals. The message I was painting was the story of Esther and how she saved the Jews from annihilation.All of the murals were painted on plywood and each section was 8 feet tall and approximately 5 feet wide. For consistency, we used the same basic color palette for all of the murals; they were a more muted version of SFCC’s logo colors.

I spent several weeks sketching my drawing with pen & paper, then in PhotoShop. I printed the PhotoShop sketch out for me to reference while onstage and painting. Before my weekend started, I lightly sketched the outlines of my work in pencil on the plywood. I only had three services (or a little over 3 hours) to complete the painting, so I had to plan out how I would paint each section to ensure I did not run out of time.

I essentially completed the painting before the last service ended, but I did go back the following Monday to add a few highlights and touch-ups.

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Every once in a while I get to play guitar with the SFCC band for a weekend. It is one of the things I love to do most in this world – I wish I could do it all of the time. One weekend I needed to play acoustic for a couple of songs and then electric for the rest. The experience revealed a need I had never considered as I hardly ever need to play electric and acoustic in the same set.

I currently use the Line6 HD500 for my delay, reverb, compressor, noise gate and any modulation effects. The HD500 also has a built-in guitar tuner that works just fine for my needs… until I needed to tune my acoustic guitar on-the-fly between songs.

Being a luthier and former touring guitar tech, I had no problem quickly unplugging my electric guitar’s cable and popping it into my acoustic (after ensuring it was muted at FOH of course!). I tuned up quickly using the HD500 and switched the cables back. It worked, but it was cumbersome and it was hard to hide all of that activity from the audience.

During the week that followed, I thought a lot about that situation. I decided I wanted a basic foot pedal that would allow me to use a single tuner for multiple guitars while still sending the guitars’ signals to their respective destinations. So both my electric and acoustics would both route through this pedal; the electric would still got to the HD500 and the acoustic into a direct box.

The idea hit me in the shower one day (not literally, that would be awkward…) and I sketched out the basic schematic in the fog on the shower door.

I wanted at least two inputs as it is normal for me to play with two electric guitars. I do not change a lot, but no respectable guitar tech would perform without a backup. And the entire purpose of the project was to be able to add an acoustic to the rig, so we’re up to three inputs. I included a backup input (why not!) and that is how I arbitrarily decided to have four 1/4 inch Switchcraft inputs (ABCD).

A prototype of the pedal with point-to-point wiring. The frontside of the prototype pedal. The first paint job did not dry well. The completed ABCD/XY Pedal The completed & installed kiosk.

The switcher also needed two discrete outputs; one for my electric rig and one for the acoustic (XY).

And finally, there it needed a “tuner out” for, wait for it, the guitar tuner.

So after a little white-boarding, the schematics here is what I put together:

• 4 inputs (ABCD)
  • Inputs A & B route to output X.
  • Inputs C&D have toggle switches that will route the signal to either output X or Y.
  • 3 stomp switch to select inputs.
    • A switch for toggling between the A & B inputs.
    • A switch for activating the C input (and disabling A &B).
    • A switch for activation the D input (and disabling A, B & C inputs).
• 2 discrete outputs (XY)
  • X routes to my electric guitar rig.
  • Y routes to my acoustic’s direct box.
• 1 tuner output
  • A stomp switch activates the tuner output.
  • The stomp switch mutes both X&Y outputs.
• Super bright, blue LED’s that will burn a hole in your retina.
  • LED’s are on an isolated circuit from the audio signals.
  • LEDs are powered by a 9volt battery or external power supply.
• Two-tone paint (just because…)

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