Last semester we built the first iteration of Toms electrical system, which was built so as to be as safe and robust as possible. But also to be as easy to use as possible. Because there is no manual on how to design an electrical system for an animatronic there were a lot of different paths we could have gone down in terms of ways to approach it. At first the idea was thrown around of putting a lot of the electrical components inside Tom or his chair, but this was quickly abandoned because it would have made maintenance on Toms electrical or troubleshooting very difficult. Ultimately the decision was made to put as little electrical inside of toms body as possible and put as much as we could in a central location outside of tom. Once this decision was made one of our industry experts introduced us to the UL508 standard for electrical enclosures for industrial automation facilities, and we decided to use this as a sort of best practices for building Tom’s electrical system. This helped us face the reality every day that we didn’t only need to make tom a functional animatronic. we needed to make him a safe animatronic.
This point was driven home by one of our faculty last semester when they sent us a video of an animatronic dinosaur at a theme park burning to the ground during normal operations after suffering the fate of an electrical problem. This made us be even more meticulous in the planning and preparation of Toms electrical system, and This attention to detail ultimately led to the discovery last semester that one of Toms power supplies was dangerously defective.
This semester we were forced to confront the reality of needing to finish construction of Toms electrical system before our install date, while also iterating the electrical design and finding electrical components that would bring increased levels of safety to Tom, to make sure he never turns into a flaming dinosaur. while we did have to sacrifice time in other areas it definitely was not only necessary to spend a large portion of this semester iteration the electrical and finding ways to make Tom safer and also increase his functionality while meeting some of our clients requirements.
A short list of some of the many positive things that came out of really diving back into electrical this semester are include include additional circuit breakers, so now every component in the electrical panel is individually protected. Relays for both the E-stop and the remote power on/off function, which allow us to disconnect all power or just individual sections, Upgrading the multi wire connector for one of Tom’s distribution boxes along with adding a 2nd electrical distribution box specifically for the scepter. Additionally adding 8 status indicators to make it very quick and easy to see what the status of Toms electrical system is. All of these not only make tom much safer but also bring a new level of functionality and ease of use to Tom that he previously didn’t have. Taking the time upfront to iterate the electrical also paid off during our install as everything fit right into place and worked immediately as intended. But as I said above spending so much time iterating the electrical meant that we did not have time to spend on other systems.
One of those areas was with electrical consuming so much time we didn’t have a chance to test the DMX record in function for the lights in Toms scepter prior to going to Orlando. Unfortunately the process was not as simple as we had assumed, and required different hardware than what we anticipated. Specifically we needed a console that could send the lighting data over art-net which the laptop DMX controller we brought with us was unable to. Additionally we realized that we needed to record timing data in with the DMX rather than just being able to record a few effects and then copy and paste them in conductor wherever we wanted them. Once again the smart planning of doing our install while most of our industry experts were in town for IAPPA paid off and Mike from Weigl had a compatible lighting console with him that I knew how to program on, which he graciously lent us for several day. Being prepared and leaving time for unknowns paid off once again when it came to tackling Toms sound system. We knew it was going to take time actually being in the space to Tune toms audio so he sounded as alive as possible along with getting him and father time to have similar volume. Having planned for this time in our schedule proved invaluable when the sound system that was planned for tom wound up not working out and we had to piece together a sound system through a mix of existing audio hardware and assembling a new set of speakers and some audio cables.
Ultimately Taking a lot more time this semester to work on the electrical was the right decision and even though we encountered problems on other fronts, we were able to successfully install Tom thanks to the smart ways we prepared and what we choose to spend our time on.
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