PiIoT - The perfect reading place #5 [doc]: Architecture and design

Note: the [doc] distinguish the documental posts from the [tech], technical posts

It was necessary waiting for the confirmation of some key aspects of the project to reach a definitive design. The creation of the components as in the design architecture is be possible as I was confirmed in the past days by a second sponsorship from the GearBest company that has provided a 2.5A laser engraver (I have already published an instructables tutorial about this machine) and 100 geared stepper motors With controller controllers. A clear detail of the usage of this components will be shown below.

On-site installation notes

One of the aspects that condition the architecture design are the installation lineguides. As the project will be hosted inside a museum it should integrate with the already existing structure. The main goal if this organisation is to create a user experience for the visitor aiming to explain how visually-impaired people can interact with the world around themselves. The perfect reading place, following this vision is a technology-empowered environment that can adapt the way it can interface with the users. These realisation conditions have been focused in the following rules:

• The installation should be easily moveable
• Should be easily managed by non-skilled personnel
• Should be part of the non-impaired visitors of the site (integrated with the other experiences already available)
• Will demonstrate the autonomous adaptability of the environment empowered by the IoT technology
• Should be part of an enjoyable experience for the users (avoid technical presentation and more game-oriented interaction)
• Should point the attention to the Internet of Things technology helpful capabilities, especially for visually-impaired users

Functional scheme

The entire project is divided in three main areas:

Main interaction point

It is the core of the system, installed on a accessible desk. It includes the UI components both traditional and non-conventional: beside the keyborad, mouse, display and touch screen there will be text-to-speech reading system, auto-zooming of the images, gesture recognition and more. So it will be possible to grant the access to the information content to any kind of subject. Position sensors and NFC reader together with other kind of sensors the main interaction point should be able to recognise the approaching subject, adapting its behaviour and enabling the proper interfaces.

Art-a-tronic

The name originates joining the two words Art and Animatronic. Based on an original opera of the digital artist Lorenzo P. Merlo I have further processed the opera to make it animated. The final goal is to empower the image components of a visual-art image making it a series of solid parts linked together that can be touched as well as viewed.

Dynamic surface

It is a prototypal design of a modulating surface that can represent 3D variable shapes. It can be considered as an extension of the traditional flat display.

Connectivity

The connectivity introduces two approaches: Internet connectivity enable users (mostly from the main interaction point) to navigate for browsing, email access, chat and more. An optional external access is possible from the outside through a remote server gateway. Internet connection is granted by the WiFi still existing on-site.

The three main components Main interaction point, Dynamics surface and Art-a-tronic are connected together a series of linked IoT nodes (based on the enOcean technology) together with some environmental sensors.