Mad Systems

One of our latest projects was Professor Pennypickle’s lab for the Temecula Children’s Museum. The project was designed and implemented in conjunction with Thinkwell, and what a nice result.

The concept was to create a room with interactives for children from 4 to 8 years old (we caught some very much older folks having fun with it…).

We started out with a 13′ wide by 8′ high moving gear wall, very much like a huge clock (the hands turn, obviously both running in opposite directions), with a “Sit and Spin” exhibit where kids sit on a small platform and when they spin around its hub, they activate gears within the wall that features a small generator (a coil with some magnets on a gear with a current meter showing that electricity is being generated), and a compass (to show that the magnets moving around on the gear are in North-South and South-North configuration). There is also an oval and a square gearset that kids can rotate to see some unusual shaped gears work together, with the square gear activating a bellows with a train horn through a set of partial gears. Simple fun.

Professor Pennypickle has an assistant, his capable mouse Beaker, who himself has an IQ of over 180; we recreated Beaker’s lab where he is working on a … hmm, that must be a time machine! There is also a morse (mouse?) code interactive that allows kids and courageous adults to use a morse key to ask Beaker questions, as well as one of our “MovieViewers” that lets visitors see Beakers house from the inside by rotating its dial. Beaker’s house was created in a number of modules, each designed and assembled by museum volunteers.

A pachinko machine, made from what must be the Prof’s old tools, is used to test gravity, and simple interactive pulley mechanisms show that he must be thinking about gravity in some detail.

MSI’s Science Storms Ad

ORANGE, CA—Opened on May 14, 1935, the Griffith Observatory was used continuously for 66 years and hosted nearly 70 million visitors, with millions more visiting the location without entering the building. In 2002 the observatory shut down for its first-ever significant capital improvements. In order to properly serve the two million people who visit each year, a lengthy renovation project was developed, and the observatory will reopen in its new glory later this year.

Mad Systems loaded up another system on Friday 6th November on its way out to a job. Watch this page for updates once this new and quite incredible gallery opens!

oh – and yes, this was edited a little from the original form, as there were some moments that just needed a little enhancing.

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago opened their latest exhibit gallery, “You the Experience” on the 8th of October 2009. Mad Systems are proud to have provided all the AV design, infra-structure and equipment for this equipment. Another cutting edge PC based system, the “You” system comprises well over 100 computers, which are all networked, and all available over a secure remote link to our office, so that we can assist the client with remote maintenance of the system – Mad can access and control all of the computers in the system. Split over 3 phases and 2 control rooms, the 14 racks of equipment are linked and controllable from one of three housekeeping stations. Three cameras are also included in the system so that a real time link between exhibit technicians on site and at Mad Systems can look at the status of the system.