Throwback Thursday

Feb 2019

At Accompany Software, I worked on a display for 3M to display their Vikuiti product line at SID 2003 (Society for Information Display). We managed to build an array of 64 PDA's that made up a display wall. We also were able to create animations that would span the entire length.

Each PDA has its own processor. What we ended up building was a Flash based application with a modified XML server that would scale to the dimensions of the PDAs. Over the serial port we would trigger a byte that would start the animation in motion. We found that traffic over USB wasn't instantaneous.

At one point we did flush how to motorize the PDAs as well with synchronized animation. This is a combination of using 3D Studio Max and video. I was able to build a simulated armature and output the rotation degrees so our motors could use it. However, time, budget and sleep cut that from scope.

This project provided lots of roadblocks and challenges and though 15+ years ago is still a fond experience.