Towards the end of my run at the Children's Creativity Museum (CCM) I became the developer of a permanent exhibit called SnapIt. Well actually SnapIt 2.0 since original SnapIt (Original name unknown) was an original exhibit at the CCM when it first opened in 1998 as the Zeum. I remembered using the exhibit as a kid and it was an honor to give new life to the dying exhibit.
Unfortunately I don't have a way of adding pdf's into posts yet. I'm working on it and will do it when I get some free time for coding. Anyways I wrote this guide to help the Exhibits Team maintain Snap It.
Attached is the schematic of the SnapIt hardware. Please not a lot of the images are not my own and were found on the internet.
To be quite honest, I was already writing a Stopmotion program in processing before I realized it would be beneficial to the museum. It still had ways to go but I had figured out how to use the camera, fullscreen/Kiosk mode, add filters to the frames, and playback frames. (All of the features were controlled via keyboard)
The exhibit already had a cabinet and arcade button interface panel that would be re-purposed to prevent the need for a large budget.
As mentioned in the project summary above the previous exhibit was dying. Yes dying... it completely stopped working actually probably because they never turned the darn machine off since 1998 and it was from 1998. It was an old macintosh computer if I remember looking up the specs and being amazed. It was one of the first computers able to display live video or something. Unfortunately, I didn't take ANY pictures of this project and am writing all of these entries from memory.
The goal was pretty simple use Arduino and Processing to take the old exhibit, gut it by removing the old computer, and install my new hardware/software. The projected ended up being a prototype because it had to be tested to make sure it wouldn't crash from everyday use like most of the exhibits at the museum.