Interact with data!
This is a project that stands out - electronics, web and box fabrication - all in one!
We are a team of people that just met each other when we started.
Digital world is fantastic but when presenting to a wider public, physical interaction is crucial. While everything can be seen on a computer, you will never forget your last visit to Questacon. Museums, schools, environment agencies can all have such feature in a lobby or as an exhibit. Super low power consumption and standard components make this easy to maintain, update or even fix.
Kids or adults (including childish adults!) still like to press a button. Well, we have two!
InfoBox v1 is just that. We have much more advanced concept but would need more time to develop it (investors - wink-wink!). Ideas such as gesture scrolling through data (easy!) or online data feeder so you do not need to . We took some critical data describing Australia and some if it just may surprise you.
There are only two buttons to use! Use one to select a state vs Australia value and select another one to select topic.
Device will generate a simple web output with a simple Ethernet connection that can be embedded in your website. As a proof of concept, we created a website that embeds all needed data and can be opened on any laptop. This presents a fully contained system: interface-website-TV with no external dependencies.
Essentially, data is within a website on a laptop or Raspberry PI and Arduino provides input control and LED control.
But if you are creative, you can put it online and connect a device on the other side of the worlds - just expose port 80 from InfoBox and use our website or make your own to embed it.
Cost to produce would be very low and all of the hard work is done.
v2 plans include (proof of concepts already partially developed for some):
- download on boot to get fresh data (or save to SD and download on request)
- ultrasonic (demo!) or infrared distance sensor to scroll through data or datasets
- multiple years, not just 2016
- unified platform (all on Raspberri PI) so it is all in one device instead of device plus laptop or RPI as in our case
- WiFi instead of Ethernet (especially if Raspberry PI)
- and more...
Data used was from ABS - Census 2016 and we selected state values for:
Contribution to National GDP
CPI Change (Jun-15 to Jun-16)
House Price Index (Jun-15 to Jun-16)
Total persons
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander persons
Birthplace (Australia)
Languages spoken at home (other than English)
Australian Citizens
Persons attending an educational institution
Completed Year 12 or equivalent
Persons in occupied private dwellings
Project is nearly done but we ended up hitting an issue with iframes while meshing up. We only need few more hours - don't let that discourage you as this project is one of the kind combination of many components.
