👶🏾 ‼️ 🚻 Creating an Art Object for Burning Man 🧕🏾 😪 👴🏼

Hello. My name is Sergey, and in this article I will talk about how we made an art object for the Burning Man event. I will talk about the technical side without touching the event itself. Well, barely touching.

Artmisto Team

In 2019, our team brought the Cocoonap project to the largest Burning Man art event. The team members are mainly from Ukraine, as well as from America and Australia, only 18 people, of which twelve were able to go into the desert.

Artmisto Team Cocoonap

Art Object is a kinetic installation that changes shape over time. It is a wooden cocoon, almost 3 m high, mounted on a steel frame. The cocoon itself consists of five petals, which, opening under the light and musical accompaniment, turn into a flower. Then the middle of the flower turns into figures of two people. These figures take on metaphorical wings and then the installation dissolves into the night. The cycle starts anew.

I participated in this project as a mechanical engineer. Everything related to the transformation of the designer's sketches into wood and iron, drawings, 3D-models and kinematics was in my area of responsibility.

Background

In October 2018, my old friend Vova, whom I had not seen for about ten years, called me and offered to meet. He had just arrived from his first BM2018 with burning eyes and dreams of bringing the installation to the desert next year. And he was looking for people who could somehow help. I agreed to help with the drawings and ideas for translating his dreams into iron, but nothing more - for me, such a trip did not fit into the family budget or time schedule. But, gradually getting involved in the project, it became clear that it was necessary to go, and even very much. In parallel, we were looking for people who could help us, because there were a lot of tasks: sound tracks, programming light, control electronics and linear drives and controlling them.

Installation requirements and working conditions

In short, our installation should be assembled and debugged in Ukraine, transported to America, installed in the desert and should work there for one week.

To do this, it must meet the following requirements:

Withstand temperature drops from -10 to + 40
Resistant to strong winds
Work in continuous dust and dust storms
Be firmly attached to the surface
Be safe and resistant to viewers

The desert in which the event takes place is the bottom of a dried lake, such a many-kilometer frying pan surrounded by mountains. During the day, the temperature can rise above forty degrees, and at night fall below zero. Therefore, all electronics must withstand such temperature changes.

There is a very strong wind in the desert, it sweeps tents and rolls kiters.
On the second day, a hurricane in our camp demolished a frame tent for rest, despite all the extensions and 10-inch screw anchors.

Therefore, the art object must be firmly fixed to the surface of the earth. We fastened the frame of our cocoon with cables to five one and a half meter drill anchors, which were screwed around the perimeter. By the way, the anchors themselves and the equipment for screwing them were provided to us by the organizers of BM.

The surface of the cocoon is covered with patterned plates, each with its own pattern. Sailing is quite large, so the power elements must withstand the wind and not break.

Photo by Jonathan Clark

A separate headache is dust. A strong wind raises clouds of dust from the surface, and they are so dense that you can not see the fingers on an outstretched arm. This is not sand, it is a fine clay alkaline dust that sticks to everything, penetrates everywhere and it is impossible to get rid of it. Therefore, all moving parts, such as linear actuator rods, should be protected by corrugations, ball bearings should be closed, and all electronics should be in the housings. There must be additional air filters for generators.

In the afternoon when the installation does not work, it must be closed and locked so that it cannot be opened manually. And at night, when it should work, you need to start the show and monitor the installation and the audience so that they do not break anything out of an excess of feelings and do not get hurt. This was monitored by night attendants, two people each.

Leave No Trace is one of the principles of the event: the desert should remain the same after you as it was before you.

Therefore, we had a special tent for dirty work: shavings and sawdust are much easier to assemble in a tent than to choose from dust. But we had a special tool for cleaning: brushes and a magnetic rake.

What else needs to be considered when developing?

The imperial system in America.

Our installation was assembled and tested in Ukraine. After tests and adjustments, the wooden part and the electronics were disassembled, packaged and shipped to the States - it turned out to be much cheaper than cutting parts in America. And the steel frame should have been welded already in the States. Therefore, all sizes of materials were selected so that it was possible to buy on the spot: for example, we used steel pipes of rectangular cross section 50x25 mm (2x1 inch) and plywood with a thickness that is a multiple of fractions of an inch - 12 and 6 mm.

These dimensions were laid already at the stage of creating a 3D model and drawings.

Mains voltage

In America, the mains voltage is 110 V, 60 Hz. And American generators produce it. Therefore, all power supplies and chargers that we brought from Ukraine should work from undervoltage. Most modern switching power supplies operate on 110 V without problems, but some had to be searched and checked using LATR. Therefore, the entire power tool that we drove into the desert, had to buy in America.

In the desert - it is empty.

Therefore, all hardware, bearings, consumables and tools need to be taken with you and have stock, because a trip to the nearest hardware store can take three days. And it will be very disappointing if the year of work goes down due to the fact that you forgot the studs or took insufficient nuts.

ARTery

BM bureaucracy is minimized. Even at the stage of filing an application for the placement of an art object, a team from ARTery is assigned to the team, which helps to solve all current issues: drawings, energy supply, assistance with heavy construction equipment, etc. ARTery is a division of the organizers, designed in every way to help teams that bring art objects. Their task is to make the team succeed.

For example, the organizers provided machines for our art object to dig trenches and to screw one and a half meter anchors around the perimeter of the frame. A larger facilities provided cranes and lifts. Naturally, completely free.

Generator protection

In the desert you need to bring everything with you, even shadow and electricity. It was decided to power our installation from the generator. But, according to the requirements, the generator must be protected and lit. Usually, they buy a ready-made doghouse for this and put the generator inside, or build a special box.

We have a solution to this issue was postponed to the last day. And, already in Seattle, when we were about to go to the hardware store for a booth, we saw a man take out a table from a neighboring house. The usual desk, a very suitable size. We took this table, screwed protective nets on the sides, door hinges to the legs, and put it all on the plywood sheet that we had left from the shipping box. And decorated a bit.

As a result, instead of a boring box for the generator, we got a separate art object!

Development stages

My work began with this picture. From it I took the contours of a cocoon and used them as a sketch for a model in SolidWorks.

The first renderings of the model. At this stage, the general view of the assembly of the cocoon is already understood.
A rotating part was developed separately, with its independent power supply, controllers and mechanics.

Then we order the manufacture of parts, 12 mm plywood was cut with a mill, 6 mm with a laser.
After receiving the parts - the assembly and adjustment of kinematics, after which disassembly, packaging and shipping to the States.

The box is visible here. I specifically made it so that the largest details fit there - two-meter keels. Pay attention to the dark ring on the left, I will talk about it a little later.

Some technical solutions

Despite the fact that I tried to use standard components as widely as possible, which can be bought without any problems both in Ukraine and America, there were no ready-made solutions for some nodes, and I had to invent them on the go. Some of these solutions look strange, but it turned out that they worked amazingly.

In this picture, a steel frame with a height of 700 mm is visible. And one petal, for scale.

The attachment point of the petal to the frame. Each petal is attached to the frame through two housing bearings and two plywood inserts.

And here is the mechanics of the wings. The linear drive rotates the axis through the tee.

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A word to Kostya, the lord of actuators.

This photo is not a production one. This is the moment when we realized that a lot of things are not working, and the main programmer is located over 9 thousand kilometers and 10 time zones from bugs that he needs to fix. In the morning we will go to the desert and it will be problematic to contact him, not to mention the fact that remote debugging of embedded software is not an easy task.

At first glance, the design as a whole does not look very complicated, but the devil is in the details. We managed to use 8 microcontrollers, for 5 of which we had to make or modify the firmware.

I wanted to make everything as simple as possible in order to save time and reduce the likelihood of unpleasant surprises. This “simpler” one led to the fact that the individual parts were really simple, but their interaction was an unclear question until the very last moment. As a result, the main control script was written after the iron left for America. (The same programmer who, unfortunately, could not go with us.)

It should also be noted that this project, which is quite complicated in technical terms, has an absolutely tight deadline. 70,000 people living in Black Rock City will not wait. We cannot ask them to give us another week to complete the work. And if we do not have time to finish everything by this week at the end of August, then everything - all our efforts, a year of work and $ 11,000 go down the drain. In the best case, the organizers will allow us to come again next year ... And that is not a fact! Therefore, all technical solutions were considered in terms of pitfalls and timing. From an engineering point of view, many solutions are chaotic, and if it were mass production, then this is not worth doing. But for a one-time project - that’s it.

The second point of project management is that we engineers did not pay money for it. And the project is complex, time-consuming and somehow it is necessary to stimulate people. It turned out that internal motivation, conscience or what to call it is a sufficient incentive ... If all the project participants see that everything is organized well and we are moving towards the goal, then just talk to the person, look with a reproachful look to make it work, work quickly and in time .

As often happens with successful projects, but we have a successful project - we succeeded and nothing (well, almost) broke, the internal architecture does not shine with grace. One wants to exclaim: “Do not do this! Learn from our mistakes! ” Of course, this should be done if it were not a one-time project. And here the main thing is to be in time. In addition, the complexity of the architecture is caused by the presence of a rotating part, which means the need for battery power and wireless command transmission. By the way, then it turned out that the fixed part, which is powered by the generator, must also have backup power in case the storm suddenly flies up, it will be necessary to urgently close the cocoon, and the generator will break. And according to the law of meanness, he would certainly have broken in this case. Moreover, we violated the operating rules and did not change the oil after running it in.

Generators break down there often, but here we are lucky. We were generally lucky. Many objects, especially complex ones, do not have time to start on time, and given how many jambs we made, this should have happened to us. We have never assembled and run the entire system, and for the first time we saw how it works only in the desert! Is it risky? Yes, but we were lucky. Another example of luck: it was necessary to correct errors in the main control script and I wondered how long it would take for me to figure out someone else's Python code (in heat + 40C). It was already impossible to contact the developer, because with communications in the desert, everything is bad. And then it turns out that the guy next to me is a highly qualified programmer and can do everything without my participation, while in the meantime I can continue to solder the electronics.

As can be seen in the figures and video, the external petals are opened and closed by electric linear actuators with a rather large stroke of the rod (400 mm). The wings are driven by smaller actuators, and the figures themselves are generally moved by actuators with about 30 mm stroke of the rods. The central part (with figures of people and wings) is rotated by a stepper motor. Without gearbox - direct drive. The central part is rather inertial and the engine torque is not enough for “instant” acceleration, so a soft start is made soft. But no one realized that besides overcoming inertia, torque is needed to overcome the force of the wind. Especially when the deployed wings create significant windage. As a result, even a slight wind stopped the rotation.

But the synchronization of music, kinetic and lighting effects turned out to be simple. Everything is synchronized just in time. In order to achieve beauty and synchronism, it turned out to be sufficient to listen to music with a stopwatch several times and record the on / off times of effects in the main script.

The main script itself is written in Python and runs on Windows. He starts the music sequencer, and then gives UART commands via USB to Arduinka, which is installed in the fixed part of the art object. (A Windows computer is closed in a separate box and controlled by a wireless NumPad.) Depending on the command, Arduinka turns on / off the rotation of the stepper motor, gives an impulse to the actuators to close-open the petals, or transmits the command via WiFi to the rotating part. In addition, it also sends data to tapes of RGB-controlled WS2812 LEDs.

To control the music sequencer, a MIDI remote control in the form of an egg in the steampunk style was made.

In order not to burden one Arduinka with too many functions, the control of motors and WiFi is done using 4 (!) Intermediate controllers with their own programs. As it seemed to us, this will allow us to break the development into parts, entrust them to individuals and thus save time. It is difficult to say whether it was possible to save it ...

The stepper motor controller provides a smooth start, linearly increasing the rotation speed from zero to 2 revolutions per minute. The firmware is written on bare metal, without Arduino. It seemed so simpler, although the iron itself is Arduino-nano. Problems arose with the stepchip driver chip - TB6560. No tricks in any of the modes failed to achieve a current of 2 amperes from it. The maximum is 1 ampere, despite 24-volt power. As a result, the wind resistance of the structure was 2 times lower than the potential.

This is what the shagovik driver looks like after 10 days in the desert. But the dust did not affect the performance.

Management of the rotating part of the art object was done on the ESP8266 via WiFi. There were fears that the implementation of WiFi would take a long time, something would go wrong, but, surprisingly, this part was done quickly and worked flawlessly.

The actuator controller is technically the most sophisticated microprocessor assembly. Theoretically, it could be replaced by a banal relay, but it so happened that at work I have many different actuator controllers, so using a complex device or relay - there is almost no time difference. Industrial controllers, on the other hand, have many useful features, such as overcurrent protection. But most importantly, they have a lithium battery with a charge controller. There is also BLE, but by the time of development of our cocoon, it had not yet been finished to production level and I decided not to risk it. WiFi seemed a lot safer in terms of a rake.

The only problem with this industrial controller is that it is controlled via a proprietary bus, and not just by feeding logic levels. Fortunately, I quickly found at work among the junk “junk” boards that convert contact closures to commands on the bus. In general, it turned out a solution that no one can repeat, but in our case this is not necessary. The project is one-time. The main thing is that there are spare parts! By the way, almost all the iron was transported into the desert with backup components. The exception was a stepper motor due to the price of 600 euros and actuators of the rotating part, as they are mega-reliable. Even plywood stencils have been duplicated.

The rotating part is powered by 4 different batteries. The largest of them, lithium at 55 watts hours, 24 volts, feeds the actuators. At the same time, an identical battery is charged from the generator in the fixed part of the installation. Once a day, the batteries are manually swapped and the show continues. As experience has shown, 55 watt-hours were enough just right up to the mark. Lucky again.

It would be possible to make converters from 24 volts to other voltages, but it turned out to be faster and easier to use separate batteries. The usual five-volt power bank powered the WiFi ESP8266 module for almost a week without recharging. The LED threads were powered by several pairs of AA batteries, they were simply periodically changed. The filaments of cold neon were also powered by a pair of AA batteries, but separate.

Cold neon generally brought a lot of problems. It operates on high-voltage (~ 100V) high-frequency (~ 1000Hz) voltage, which is generated by numerous varieties of Chinese converters. We tried several of these converters, and all of them either burned themselves or burned the neon threads themselves after some short and unpredictable time. It seemed that this fragile contraption burns out even from a sideways glance! It's funny that for “ordinary” people, cold neon works without problems, so we did not wait for a catch on this side. Apparently we used a much longer thread length than ordinary users. In the end, we found a converter that itself never burned out and burned nothing. The converter is low-power, it lasts for 5 meters and is powered by 2 AA batteries. I suspect,that it was his low power and low power of the batteries themselves that protected them from burnout. Perhaps someone knows the reason for the unreliable operation of other converters. It would be very interesting to know.

But in the desert, without access to the Internet and a few hours before the official launch of Burning Man, we no longer had time to sort it out and I just soldered 5 such converters to our threads and we forgot about this nightmare. By the way, soldering in the heat with constant wind is a separate entertainment. In addition, you can not drop drops of solder and wire cuts to the ground, so you need to solder carefully, above the box. Fortunately, someone bought a soldering iron with a temperature regulator, which can maintain the temperature of the tip, regardless of the intensity of cooling - blowing with the wind. And the fact that dust flies, too, was not a problem - just use ski goggles that protect your eyes perfectly. Dust, as it turned out, does not affect the quality of the soldering itself.

With the exception of the battery zoo, the rotating part is designed similarly to the fixed part and uses a similar circuit for connecting the actuator controller.

Looking back, we can say that some of the technical solutions were successful (using actuators), some were not (a stepper motor for rotating the central part), and some were a real nightmare of an engineer (lack of feedback on folding wings). Even now, looking at the video of our art, I’m afraid that the folding command will not work (WiFi all the same), or the battery will sit down or something, and the external petals will start to close and break the whole structure (the actuator gives 600 kg of force, exactly enough).

After setting up the software, we collect everything, load it into cars and drive it into the desert. Go!

Entry line

Playa Construction

Again Sergey on the air of

Playa is a round platform in the middle of Black Rock City, designed to install the main art objects. In its very center, The Man is installed, just north of The Temple: these are the two main art objects built by the organizers.

We arrived four days before the official opening, and three of them were spent on assembling our cocoon.

We got a point from the organizers, the coordinates where our cocoon should be installed. Construction begins! For three days we collected our cocoon. Especially a lot of time was spent on installing decorative panels, and gluing LED strips on the petals.

Funny story about enchanting fakap

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Next - a few photos from the construction site.

The decorative panels are arranged in order.

Installation of decorative panels.

Around the frame are pink flags - marking for anchors. We are waiting for a machine for twisting anchors.

In the desert, even the shadow must be taken with you.

Setting the petals.

Mayan Warrior is coming to us, bringing us music.

Thanks to the fact that we did all the installation subsystems one after another, and sent them to the States with several packages, we saw our brainchild fully assembled already in Playa.

Incredible feeling!

As a result of the efforts of each member of our wonderful team, we were able to build our cocoon several hours before the official start of the event. We are well done!

And then - there was a week of shows and communication with the audience.

Surprisingly, despite the harsh conditions, our installation worked for a week as a watch, without breakdowns or special problems.

At the end of the event, we dismantled our installation. Power wooden parts were burned, and decorative panels we partially handed out on the playa as souvenirs, and partially brought to the Dnieper.

This concludes my story and suggests watching a video of the assembly process.

Thank you for the attention.

Creating an Art Object for Burning Man