Old Airport Dot Boards Go On Steroids, Get Interactive
July 19, 2012 by Dave Haynes
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There’s not a lot of new in this sector, so it’s fascinating to at least learn of a project that takes old technology, tweaks the hell out of it, and makes it new and very interesting.
A Brooklyn-based interactive team called Breakfast has used the electromagnetic fot ticker boards that you may have seen at rail stations and airports and turned them into fully interactive windows.
To launch a new crime show on the TNT cable network, the company was hired to install 23 12-foot electromagnetic panels in empty retail space at New york’s Herald Square. The company monkeyed with the wiring and wrote new software to make the black and white dots in these panels switch 15 times faster than they normally do. That allows them to make the units interactive – with cameras/sensors mounted at the bottoms picking up movements and gestures and affecting the content on display.
If you have been around these things you also know the plastic dots make a chattering noise when things change, which is interesting in itself.
It’s very clever in an ambient, experiential kind of way. This is no replacement, at all, for video walls. But its own special application thing.
The display is there until July 29th.
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