
Building Pulse and Bloom, an interactive biofeedback installation at Burning Man - conesus
http://www.ofbrooklyn.com/2014/09/6/building-pulse-bloom-biofeedback-burning-man-2014/
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conesus
Hey HN, this was my first art installation and boy was it a whopper. Used by
tens of thousands of people in 8 days, it had 40 hand-made pulse sensors, 200
high current LEDs, and 40 5 meter LED strips. All running off an ATmega328p
chip.

Would love to answer any questions on building art installations.

~~~
muloka
By the way I've shared with the unofficial Burning Man fb group
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/burntheman/permalink/1015458...](https://www.facebook.com/groups/burntheman/permalink/10154580583200144/)

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angersock
...why would you make a Facebook group about this?

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bradleysmith
... to share snarky comments and bitch about things.

Why does anyone start a facebook group? what about BM makes it non-facebook-
group friendly? There are a lot of loosely connect people that meet through BM
or regionals, facebook is actually a pretty well-suited platform for
discussion.

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aidos
That's a really lovely idea. Congratulations on pulling off your vision.

It's awesome to see how much work went into it. When you're wondering around
the playa it's easy to get lost in all the wonderful things going on and not
take the time to step back and think about how much work goes into each
individual installation.

Every time I see a clip from Burning Man I long to go back there again (I'm in
the UK, so it's not so easy). It's surely one of the greatest sensory displays
of hackers crafting wonderful work on the planet.

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bayesianhorse
I'm interested in biofeedback. And it saddens me that ecg sensors aren't out
there for people who aren't electrical engineers (or with equivalent non-
formal knowledge in this topic). Neurosky reportedly has one in the works (but
probably also 50-100$).

The problem with most heartbeat sensors is that they only give you a
frequency. They don't tell you when the heartbeats arrive, or, god forbit,
anything interesting about the actual signal.

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btbuildem
Here's an actual video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fucQFf7Txws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fucQFf7Txws)
(surprised to see there wasn't a video on OP's page)

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conesus
There's a video at the top, it's the first graphic. It is also 42 MB, so it
may take a while to load.

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hoprocker
This is awesome. I just completed a simple first foray into attaching circuits
and LEDs to one of my welding projects, and seeing a walkthrough of the steps
that I also had to figure out (culminating in an impressive large-scale
installation!) is fascinating. Thank you so much!

 _edit_ Btw, also amazing that you were willing to lug the battery back to
camp and recharge it via solar power. So many installations out there are
marred by the grating sound of a generator in the background.

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ErikRogneby
Any issues with the alkaline dust causing issues with the electronics?

~~~
conesus
Oddly no. There's a photo in the post where I show a well dusted board, but no
shorts were caused by the dust. There was definitely weatherproofing we could
have performed on the boards to handle that issue, but I was waiting until it
actually became a problem.

It did rain one day, but only during the day when the installation was off.
And thank goodness because if the installation was on, not only would we have
a pickle of an issue with all of our exposed wiring, but we would have to get
to the middle of the playa in the middle of a rainstorm. It's nearly
impossible to move when it rains since the dust cakes onto your shoes and eats
everything alive.

~~~
ChrisGammell
Yup, was going to mention conformal coating (keyword is important for the
electronics side of things). You can get it in a spray can and it goes on like
a lacquer, pretty simple (might need to tape certain parts if they need to be
exposed). A good conformal coating can withstand the acrid nature of coal
plants, I bet it can also handle the playa (though it seems like things fared
pretty well as is).

Great project and thanks for the writeup! Hope to see you at future hw meetups
in SF! :-)

