The fountain controlling Kiosk in Engineering Hall now has two new features! After 45 seconds of viewing a different tab from the control tab, the kiosk will automatically switch back to the control tab. Second, whenever the kiosk crashes, we will receive an email letting us know that we need to restart the kiosk and also the geeky details of it’s failure. We hope that these features will enable us to help make the kiosk using experience better for everyone.
If you have a suggestion for kiosk features, come to our meeting 6pm on Tuesdays near room 1099 or send us an email at enlight-members@engr.wisc.edu
Did you ever realize how hard it is to run a fountain? As the years have gone by, we’ve depended on the senior members of our group to be able to run and understand what is going on. This year was a bit more difficult and took several days to get everything working.
It started off innocently enough. On the north end,we started taking the lights down and checked to make sure that the valves were aligned properly.
Checking the valves
On the north end, we set up the pump to drain the pool. The hoze didn’t exactly want to say on, but we made it anyways.
After the drain, it was shovel, shovel, shovel.
The next task was to clean off the lights in the south end. We noticed that over winter there was a “small” amount of algee growth. It also seemed to accumlate on the lights just a bit. Eric fearlessly cleanred them off with some HCl.
We also took note of some of the damage on the fountain.
Now we could start working on filling the pipes. We set up the bubble tubes, and were greated by drudge.
Yummy!
While the pools filled, Eric wanted them to go faster so he decided to get out the big guns.
We had to wait a while for everything to get ready, so there was plenty of time to relax.
Eventaully the bubble tubes filled with clear water and we got the fountain running for all to enjoy!
Children playing by the fountain
It was only later that we realized that something was wrong. Danielle was walking past the fountain when she noticed that the fountain was only spraying out dribbles. She shut of the pumps and tired to look for what was wrong. We got some people out there to check things out. THe problem appeared to be an open drain. When we had been cleaning the pool, the south end pool drain was opened and never fully shut. We closed the pipe and now everything appears to be running smoothly.
Enjoy the pictures!
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Wrapping up the lights
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Checking the valves
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Setting up the pump
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Lifting the grates
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Shoveling out noth end reservoir
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That’ll hold her down
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Fixed pipe
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Broken bubble tube
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“Tight” connection
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Shoveling drudge
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Safety on the tower
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Algee on lights
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Taking off the lights
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HCl and algee don’t mix
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Fountain damage
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Attaching the pipes for the bubble tubes
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Yummy!
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What’s down there?
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More water!
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Keep on filling
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Having fun filling the fountain
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Taking an nap
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Bubble tubes working
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Big splash
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Children playing by the fountain
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North end filling
Cleaning, Electrical, Kiosk, Maquina Project, North End, Software, South End
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Algae, Bubble Towers, Cleaning, cRIO, Fountain Repairs, Interaction, Mechanical, North End, North End Mister, planning, Repair, replaced, rust, software, South End
Enlight is not a group that likes to do the same thing every year. This year, we will be running lights on and around the south end of the Maquina fountain. Right now, we have some of the wiring in place and hope to get most of the lights up by next week. Once the light are up, there is the possibility of controlling the lights from the kiosk! When not being controlled, the light will flash in exciting patterns for your entertainment. If you would like to help code, wire up new lines from the fountain to the underground, or just want to hang out, feel free to stop by our meetings next week Tuesday by room 1099 at 6p. It’s never too late to join in on the fun!
Besides keeping the fountain clean and running, Enlight also maintains the touch screen kiosk in Engineering Hall. We use our own home grown software to allow you, the user, to interact with the fountain. Like all software, though, it doesn’t always work. While part of the team was out cleaning the fountain, another group of people worked on debugging the kiosk. For the longest time, the kiosk would crash in an undesirable way and expose the desktop whenever there was an interruption of service between it and the server that runs the fountain and manages external connections.. Now, we are handling exceptions properly and displaying the correct error message to the user. We hope that this update will help you to have a more enjoyable and reliable experience when using the kiosk. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Enlight, stop at our meetings on Tuesday nights in 1099 ECB around 6:00pm to learn more. If you have any suggestions for improvement or new features you would like to see on the kiosk, feel free to come to our meeting or shoot us an email at enlight-members@engr.wisc.edu.
Hollywood tries to portray programmers and hackers as these super, awesome, cool people who have their monitor project onto their faces and run away from exploding buildings. Unfortunately, this is not the case for most of us. While programming and technology is a very rewarding and exciting profession, there are times that we all must go back to the unglamorous job of troubleshooting uncooperative hardware and software. Tonight, we spent around two and a half hours trying to figure out why the touch screen on the Kiosk in Engineering Hall wasn’t working. Previously, the case was open and the entire machine had crashed. After checking the cables, power cords, etc., we tried to reinstall the drivers. Through a combination of clicking and opening a single window in the control panel, the kiosk is now working. If anyone is having any issues with the kiosk, please email enlight-members@engr.wisc.edu to help facilitate it’s repair.
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!
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