[SML] Theatre and Pi

[Ray Gibson]

I've been strongly considering wiring dallas one wire temperature
sensors back to a pi to at least attach to the bases of the ancient
mac 550's in the campus theater, mostly as a way of proving to the
others on staff that "five or ten minutes" isn't long enough for them
to cool down before they cut the power after lamping off, and because
I'm tired of replacing burnt out fans.

Things that have deterred me from doing so include:
1. the insane distance between the electrics when going the "long" way
of following the cable
2. inability to attach to or tie into the lamp housing temperature
(they do wiggle after all)
3. if they all just happen to break at once, maybe a compassionate
donor will purchase something made in, oh, the last ten years.

While the pi and its multiple spawn, clones, etc, are fantastic little
products for tinkering and such, I think a more creative person would
need to come up with practical applications for the theater.  With its
extensive ability to run code, and ultimately be triggered from QLab
or something, I wouldn't want to use it for any sort of large scenery
automation replacement, as I have visions of my old stagecraft
professor Bill Meyer telling horror stories about me to his future
students if something were to go wrong.

What could go wrong?  Well, we recently learned about the
photoelectric effect, as a Xenon flash will make the whole thing
reboot! Link and video:
http://www.neowin.net/news/a-camera-flash-will-make-the-raspberry-pi-2-freeze-and-reboot

That can be fixed with a nice opaque case however.  I think the Pi
could be useful as an I2C driver for those newfangled binkly tape RGB
LED strips.  Others have hooked up USB to DMX adapters and used them
to drive fixtures, which might be neat for an architectural
installation.  Perhaps on the same hardware you could potentially
control a Pi with DMX, but that idea seems about as archaic as dial
up.

I would love to hear some other ideas.  Have fun tinkering.

Ray


On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Jon Ares via Stagecraft
<stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
> Pi.... Mmm.
>
> Has anyone created anything with the Raspberry Pi bits for use in
> shows in some fashion?  Just curious. I think about Pi each time they
> come out with something new, and once again it's in my mind with the
> release of the Pi Zero this week.
>
> --
> Jon Ares
> www.arescreative.com
> http://backstagethreads.com
>
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