Control/Dimming Children's Museum problems

I love the word "connectorize" and will now be adding it to my every day vocabulary.

What is a Raspberry Pi?
Raspberry pi is my favorite little single board computer. Regular variants about the size of a deck of cards and in the 35 buck range for the Motherboard. for the W variant it's about the size of two packs of gum, and 15 buck range or less for the motherboard.. but will run full linux based OS and Open Lighting and QLC+ are two projects that will run on it. Would likely need to have a programmer to customize to what you want, but the hardware including available touch screens, buttons, etc is dirt cheap. I run my Theater's comm system on a mix of pi's and cast off thin clients. Have for years and they are rock solid little machines.
 
Does it have to be faders? I feel like some arcade cabinet style buttons would hold up better than most faders would to rough handling children. Perhaps two sets of these buttons in red, green and blue per fixture? One button for +10% the other for -10%
 
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I love the word "connectorize" and will now be adding it to my every day vocabulary.

What is a Raspberry Pi?
A series of small single board computers of various sizes and capacities, which all run ARM-based distributions of linux.

If you're on Facebook, I suggest going and finding "I take pictures of electronic parts" and seeing if you can cozy up to Tom Morris, who used to work at a children's museum in Miami. There may well be a discipline specific group he can point you to.
 
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Does it have to be faders? I feel like some arcade cabinet style buttons would hold up better than most faders would to rough handling children. Perhaps two sets of these buttons in red, green and blue per fixture? One button for +10% the other for -10%
It doesn't "have" to be faders, but we have chunky arcade buttons everywhere and they...do not hold up, we have to replace them all the time (and I hate them). I was looking for a different option, I think that maybe touchscreen faders will be the way to go if we do go with faders though unfortunately. I really enjoy the sensory experience that comes with traditional faders lol
A series of small single board computers of various sizes and capacities, which all run ARM-based distributions of linux.

If you're on Facebook, I suggest going and finding "I take pictures of electronic parts" and seeing if you can cozy up to Tom Morris, who used to work at a children's museum in Miami. There may well be a discipline specific group he can point you to.
I'll check it out, thank you!
Raspberry pi is my favorite little single board computer. Regular variants about the size of a deck of cards and in the 35 buck range for the Motherboard. for the W variant it's about the size of two packs of gum, and 15 buck range or less for the motherboard.. but will run full linux based OS and Open Lighting and QLC+ are two projects that will run on it. Would likely need to have a programmer to customize to what you want, but the hardware including available touch screens, buttons, etc is dirt cheap. I run my Theater's comm system on a mix of pi's and cast off thin clients. Have for years and they are rock solid little machines.
Gotcha, I'll definitely look into this. Do you have a place you typically order your equipment from that I can check out?
 
Gotcha, I'll definitely look into this. Do you have a place you typically order your equipment from that I can check out?
I used to order kits off amazon or ebay.. But I just checked and they are selling these little boards at scalpers prices right now. I'm guessing victims of the chip shortage. Selling at about 3x the original price for the 3b+ and the ZeroW. Much less attractive at those prices. Glad I have some in storage in case any of my active ones go belly up. Canakit was one bundler I used several times. Pi4 normally would say is overkill, but can probably get a low end pi4 for what they're charging for the pi3.
 
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Use rotary pots instead of faders. They are a bit more robust. We had something like this at our local art gallery. 3 knobs to turn to get the colour mixing. Don't over think it a Pi or Arduino will do it easily with the correct coding.
Regards
Geoff
 
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Use rotary pots instead of faders. They are a bit more robust. We had something like this at our local art gallery. 3 knobs to turn to get the colour mixing. Don't over think it a Pi or Arduino will do it easily with the correct coding.
Regards
Geoff
Can you tell me which art gallery? I might reach out and ask if they can give me an overview of their system for additional ideas. You can DM me if you don't want to post it publicly. Thank you!
 
Hey @Lin, Pretend City out here in my neck of the woods has a similar set up to what you're looking for under exactly
your circumstances. Maybe hit them up for info on vendor, and system particulars. I've seen it get wailed on pretty well, and most of the times I've been with my kids (who ain't so little anymore), their set up was in working order.

Pretend City
 
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Hey @Lin, Pretend City out here in my neck of the woods has a similar set up to what you're looking for under exactly
your circumstances. Maybe hit them up for info on vendor, and system particulars. I've seen it get wailed on pretty well, and most of the times I've been with my kids (who ain't so little anymore), their set up was in working order.

Pretend City
Thank you! I will reach out to them next week
 
Can you tell me which art gallery? I might reach out and ask if they can give me an overview of their system for additional ideas. You can DM me if you don't want to post it publicly. Thank you!
Ours is at Latrobe Regional Gallery here in Australia. Not sure how much help they will be as the exhibit was provided to them and they installed it. I am sure it would not be hard to find something on the internet that does what you want.
Enjoy the journey of discovery
Geoff
 
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My experience with Crestron is its rather "sensitive/ delicate". Every time we have an electrical storm in the area of our conference center, the system gets quiorky, and needs rebooted. That takes 3-5mins.
And make sure you have a good knowledge of the coding of the software for your location; it can be a headache to get tech support down the road.
my $.02
 
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My experience with Crestron is its rather "sensitive/ delicate". Every time we have an electrical storm in the area of our conference center, the system gets quiorky, and needs rebooted. That takes 3-5mins.
And make sure you have a good knowledge of the coding of the software for your location; it can be a headache to get tech support down the road.
my $.02
They recommend a UPS/power conditioner for most installs.
 

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