I joined Ideum and was brought onto this project in the middle of the pandemic in January 2021, just as production on the exhibits was starting to ramp back up. I was the software developer and tech lead for the Living River and Volunteer Station exhibits. I also helped with onsite installation for a majority of the exhibits in Ideum’s scope of work.
The Living River is a dynamic, LED ceiling sculpture serving as the centerpiece of the new Herpetology building. The sculpture is made up of 3,245 individually mapped LEDs spread across 145 neon LED strips. I created the wiring diagram to control the LEDS via 12 Plink Injectors, and power them with 6 separate 24v power supplies. I also led the installation and wiring of these components in the ceiling. An ENTTEC Pixelator and ELM software map the LED strands to pixels in order to display a seamless image. For the animation, I used Unity to create a procedural voronoi shader and constantly send that texture to ELM via Spout. Because of its generative real time nature, the animation is slightly different every day.
Ideum created 2 Volunteer Station tables for the Invertebrate and Herpetology buildings. These interactive stations featured a large 65” Ideum inline touchscreen and an integrated RFID reader. Each station serves dual roles, an educational game that runs while the station is unintended, and a Specimen Viewer application that the zoo volunteers use to help teach visitors about various insects and reptiles. I worked on the Specimen Viewer and the RFID controller. The RFID controller allows volunteers and zoo staff to easily switch between the table’s different modes, and is also used to allow specimens with embedded RFID tags to pull up content on the table. The Specimen Viewer loads dynamic content from an external CMS, also created by Ideum. The software has 2 independent stations that visitors use to explore location maps, specimen facts and photos, and compete in a short quiz to see what they learned. Finally, a hidden menu allows the zoo volunteers to take full control over the stations, offering a more curated experience.
This project is personally significant to me as I have been visiting the San Diego Zoo since I grew up there as a kid. I’m proud to have some of my work bringing new memories to new families in a place I have so many of my own.
For more about this project please visit Interactive Exhibits at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Explorers Basecamp (ideum.com)
