The Maquina Project

After much waiting and hard work, the kiosk is finally up! Stop by the lobby in Engineering Hall and control the fountain! If you walk up to the kiosk it’ll be showing you the real-time state of the current fountain, with the standard patterns running.

Just tap any of the dots with your finger and you’ll start to turn the valves on and off. It’s that easy!

Although what you see looks simple, there’s a huge amount of work that’s gone into this. We’ve replaced the control hardware underneath the fountain to make it faster to handle the interaction. We’ve rewritten the old software with a brand new server stack so it can deal with kiosks and (coming soon!) control via the web. We’ve build the kiosk which you’re seeing in front of you right now. So it may look simple, but it’s been a labor of love by everyone on the team. :-)

We’d like to thank CAE for helping with the kiosk, and of course National Instruments for the donation of the cRIO hardware.

Have fun!

I get asked occasionally what powers the South End calipers - they’re run by a rather underrated 20HP pump.

The large black object on the left side of the picture is a trap that catches any large debris before it can enter the pump.  The snail shaped object in the middle is the centripetal pump which is coupled to the motor on the right.  Water is pulled from the left of the image and discharged out the top large pipe.  This pipe then feeds three other pipes which run to the vertical, horizontal, and pool on the calipers at the south end.

The Maquina control kiosk was mounted late last week in the Engineering Hall lobby.  All attempts at drywall anchors met an early failure due to poor plastics and more durable plaster than usual - we ended up running long screws directly into the metal studs in the wall.

Last night the monitor and support were covertly mounted up to the kiosk case and the acrylic panels were glued in place.

This weekend XP Professional will be installed and the software will be configured to allow for control of the fountain!

Hey folks!  Sorry about the nasty pageload times in the past few weeks.  Our PHP install was missing the image libraries (GD2), so when we uploaded an image, it was not automatically shrunk down to thumbnail size.  As a result, you were downloading about 15MB of images to view this page…

Our sincere apologies: drop a comment if things are still sluggish!

The Bollards are a series of stainless steel poles along Engineering Drive directly in front of the fountain.  If you look carefully on the poles you see that 5 poles have black sensors on them.  These sensors are an infrared transmitter/receiver - they constantly transmit infrared light and wait for a reflection, indicating that something has interfered with the beam (like your hand!).  Four of five of the Bollards are currently programmed to affect the fountain:

West to East:

Bollard 0 - Turn all valves on

Bollard 1 - Slow Down

Bollard 2 - Speed Up

Bollard 3 - Turn all valves off

Bollard 4 - For future expansion ;)

Each command is implemented over time to prevent shocking the pipes with the sudden changes in water output as the pipes were designed too rigidly and are prone to fatigue fractures, which flood the basement instantly.  Next time you’re by the fountain give it a try!

The North Pool was finally full enough to turn on the spillway and the jets.

North End Online

Bubble Columns

The North End of the fountain has two large separators - they work by running all of the water into the top and allowing the sediment to settle out of the water column and then the separator is occasionally purged.

These are an effective way to remove sediment from the water to keep things cleaner.  While I was getting the North End cleaned up I decided to check that the separators were functioning properly before turning the system on for the summer.  I checked the first separator and found that it was working correctly, but the second one was not discharging as it should at the end of a cycle.  I pulled the cover off of the actuator and found that it was working properly, but the purge was still not draining the sediment.

Working Separator:

“Broken” Separator:

If you have good eyes [or were good at the spot the differences comic :) ] you’ll have noticed the stem sticking out of the right side of the “broken” separator.

It turns out that someone (or the installer) put the actuator on the wrong side of the valve - so the actuator had been attempting to turn the valve for ~15years using air as a coupler.  As a mechanical engineer I can tell you that air is not a prime choice for a mechanical coupler.  I was able to turn the valve around to get the stem on the proper side of the actuator but we’ll need to order (or make) a new stem to actuator coupler from Lakos Separators to get it working again.

Lesson Learned:

Practice common sense when installing and maintaining equipment!

The North End pool was successfully filled and is now running for the rest of summer.  The mason’s were able to make quick work of the necessary repairs which allowed us to get it refilled and running.

The first step was removing years of scum and leaves from the pool and under the ledge that runs the perimeter of the fountain.

The next step was the reinstall the acrylic bubble tubes that have been absent for a number of years.  We were only able to recover two out of three tubes from storage - the faculty responsible for them turned out to be less than responsible :( .  The bases were badly corroded from exposure but a quick brush with an aggressive wirewheel took care of the majority of the corrosion.

The final maintence task was to clean up and adjust the nozzle on the center column.

The view from the top of the tower is interesting as well.

During the pool cleaning I encountered an interesting object that I have no idea what the purpose of it is.  It has two wires running inside of it and looks like it was meant to be fixed to some object.  Anyone out there know what it is?

Finally I was able to fill the bubble tubes and begin filling the north pool.  Filling the pool takes almost 2 days.

The North End of the fountain has been slowly degrading over time.  We finally felt it was time to get it fixed so we left the fountain half off since this spring to get things repaired.  The mason’s were kind enough to get things ground out at patched up over the course of 3 days - which we appreciate! :)

Here’s some pictures of the process -

First remove all of the loose/damaged concrete

And grind out all of the cracks

The next step is to mix up your homemade repair mortar and patch the ground out areas

There was a huge hole in the North End reservoir that was repaired

The face of the North End reservoir was leaking last year, which prompted the need for repair

A large red tailed hawk took a liking to the process - I’m pretty sure this is the same hawk that murdered the squirrel on Bascom Hill, so I kept an eye on him while I vacuumed and cleaned out the North End!

There is water level detector in the basin below the calipers which detects water level and allows the 3000W of lights to turn on when the water is high enough to provide cooling to the light housings.  The concern with the level sensor is that it sticks up well beyond the protective grate covering.  We designed a simple stainless steel cage to protect the level sensor from damage at night when the fountain is turned off.

Solid model:

Actual Part: