I recently received the following project from Mike Green called the “Step Right Up” Presidential Podium. Mike’s project is a very beautiful interactive and educational artwork, and timely with our upcoming election cycle. The project was made using the Propeller 1 Multicore Microcontroller. Mike wrote:
“The eagles each had one of 12 constitutional powers of either the executive (President) or 6 of the legislature (Congress) written on its shield. The eagles normally sit in the holes on the periphery. If the participant moved the 12 eagles representing the President to the 12 holes just inside the Presidential seal, red, white, and blue LEDs would flash and “Hail to the Chief” would play. The “Prize Door” would open (using a servo) allowing the participant to take a brochure from inside the podium, then close when the music ended. The eagles unfortunately were cast from a resin that would break if the eagles fell or were dropped on a hard surface. There were spares, but that did tend to cut short the time when the podium was available to the public. Each eagle had an RFID capsule embedded in a stem underneath. One RFID reader and 12 reed relays were used with a sensing coil underneath each hole in the board around the seal. A Quadravox QV306 board was used to play “Hail to the Chief”. The controller used a Propeller Protoboard and an I2C I/O Expander.
I mention this because the Podium was stored away after a few weeks and brought out recently (after 8 years). Once I remembered that all of the 12 active eagles had to be removed from the holes with the sensor coils before being reinserted, it all worked. Now we need to make up some new eagles … in cast aluminum with a short wooden stem underneath.
Do you (or anyone else at Parallax) have any suggestions for a supplier of the glass encapsulated RFID tags? The ones I had used were about 2-3mm diameter and maybe 5-10mm long. I need maybe 8 of them.”
Thank you Mike for this amazing educational, interactive artwork! If anybody has the small 2-3mm glass RFID tags we will get them over to you!
Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.
