LA Street Smarts
Our collaboration with the Trauma Program at the Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and UCSF is finished! The project book can be downloaded here. We have updated this page consistently to cover our process.
We were asked to make an interactive set that can be driven around Los Angeles County and set up in an hour and a half by three or so Childrens Hospital employees. Our goal was to keep things lightweight, compact, durable and educational. We aimed to represent a broad range of Los Angeles scenery and living spaces. We want children to feel at home in our set so they can learn pedestrian safety and avoid urban hazards.
We have received a Certificate of Recognition from The City of Los Angeles for this project. With set design, we get to affect masses and shift perception on screen. With this interactive exhibit for children, we had the chance to build something that directly affects an audience. LA Street Smarts has the potential to save hundreds of lives.
We are:
Katie Byron, Eddy Sykes, Steve Kim and Dave O’brien
Custom Software and Electronics by Pylon Technical
Scenic art by Corrine Estrada and Marianna
Sound by Jimmy Tamborello and voices by Hoseh
“The Safety Streets set is being developed at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles to provide a hands-on experience for children to teach pedestrian safety and will be used in conjunction with UCSF’s Ace’s Adventures video game. Funding for this project was provided through Richie’s Funds (Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services) in honor of LA City Councilmember Richard Alarcón’s infant son who was killed in a car crash in North Hollywood. These funds are dedicated solely to pediatric trauma care in Los Angeles County. The Safety Streets set is being designed locally and has an estimated project completion of early fall 2009. The set will be interactive and include life size intersections with flashing traffic signals, cars backing out of driveways and children at play. It will provide several teaching avenues for the development of child pedestrian safety skills and can be transported to schools, parks, and community events. It is designed to fit in a large gymnasium but can also be erected at any outdoor site. A child that completes the Safety Street set will learn how to cross the intersection at a stop-light; avoiding rescuing a ball thrown into the street; making eye contact with a driver at an intersection before crossing; how to signal a driver who is backing up; and walking safely around motor vehicles. Elements of the Ace’s Adventures video game were incorporated throughout the set and follows similar schematics and layout of the Safety Streets set. “
Photo Updates
Wednesday February 24th: Our truck was wrapped and now looks beautiful. See the photos below!
Sunday January 17th: We celebrated our kick off event at San Jose St. Elementary School. Nearly 300 children learned about urban hazards in their neighborhood! My brothers, Jeff and Tim, attended this school. Jeff, who played a big role on the electrical part of this project, was very excited to see how the project would go over at his old elementary school.
Friday November 20th: Our Street Smarts set traveled to it’s first elementary school and met it’s first round of K-2nd graders. Here are some photos we snapped along the way:
Sunday September 20th: The past two weeks have blurred past us. We spent sleepless nights working diligently in a sprawling warehouse owned by Studio 34. We knew we couldn’t take any moment for granted there. Our blog posts and updates have suffered but our work and construction benefited beyond expectations. Now we are out of isolation and are able to fill you in. The job is nearly done. Michael Jordan, the Trauma program manager, arrived this past thursday with a 24 foot long Avon truck and drove 6 carts packed with sidewalks and flats off to a new location. We are holding on to the fragile interactive elements and fixtures until we get the truck we will use to drive them around.
Our sidewalks and flats all packed away…
Rolling up the vinyl flooring with aluminum pipe for a guide.
Packing up the track for the car…
Our microphone for the car trigger device.
If you step on this plexiglass puddle, you will hear a slipping and crashing sound.
The ball the girl and the dog chase into the street.
Our simple enclosures make set up super easy. Thank you Ben Ling for these!
Sunday August 30th: Here’s last week’s footage from our “Look Both Ways” device. Still some work to do on it. Sequence of interaction: Child approaches the device and pushes a button on the handle, voice command instructs child to look left, right and then left again. When the child turns periscope left, the red light turns on. When the child turns it right, a yellow light turns on. When the child turns it left again, a green light turns on and all lights blink and play a congratulatory message and chimes. If the child does not complete the sequence and steps off into the street, a pressure pad will trigger a loud honking and buzzing sound.
Sunday August 30th.
Our girl character who children are trying to save from running into the street.
A special jig for installing the LEDs.
Gearing up our traffic lights.
Thursday August 27th.
Wednesday August 26th. We are getting all geared up to move our set to a large warehouse down the street to paint our sidewalks, coat our entire set with a protective coating and run tests to make sure everything operates perfectly. Our electrical team is outfitting our interactive devices. Once they are finished, we can perfect and finish them off. In order to get our product out the door, we’re finishing up these very sturdy carts. I am so proud to say that these were made right here in our shop!
Before priming and painting.
We’ve color coded all of them to match the specific batch of flats and sidewalks that they carry.
Nearly a hundred LED boards go into lighting our interactive elements.
Carts after priming, before we painted them.
Our flexible mold for the girl for our interactive game. We are going to outfit her to look more like a muppet than a real life girl.
Our kiosk shell. It’s in the works!
Our trauma center friend, Helen Arbogast, proposed putting a Kids Plates license plate into the set. We loved the idea.
How the cart will carry our set.
Aluminum in place to glide flats aboard. We’ve taken these off while we paint and will be reattaching them soon!
Tracks and flat for the “Car Backing Up” game. This is partially disassembled, but you can get an idea as to how this will operate by seeing our video from a previous post!
Sunday, August 23rd. We are 3 weeks away! Last week, we made our carts which the most durable and sturdy carts I have ever seen. We will be cleaning, polishing, painting and outfitting these tomorrow. We are going to get into electronic programming this week and finish up our sidewalk. Our scenic painting is 99% finished and we’ll be coating each of our birch elements with a strong and durable, long lasting and cleanable polyurethane finish.
Wednesday August 19th.
Monday August 17th.
Friday August 14th. We have a month to go! This week, we bonded our flats together and set them up with jacks and latches that are self contained. We brought our friend, Jimmy Tamborello, on board to do fun sound effects and we reached out to Hoseh to record dialog in English and Spanish. Our scenic team is on their last week!
Latches…
Behind the scenes.
Representing apartment living.
Our track for the “Car Backing Up” game folds into itself.
Painting the strip mall.
Los Angeles bungalows.
Perfecting the track
Monday, August 10th. We are excited to hand over our interactive elements at the end of this week to our electrical expert for wiring and programming. Our scenic painting has reached a half way point. We’ve outfitted our sidewalks for the street lamps and puddles.
We’re trying to represent a varied representation of street scenery. Above is our depiction of houses in the hills.
Steve making sidewalks secure for inset puddles and traffic signals.
Building houses for our motors.
Tuesday, August 4th. We spent the weekend painting and working on ramps. Spent the last few days finishing the ramps and kickers, carving out our puddles and getting our motors ready.
The beginning of automation! Here, we’re using a scrap of plywood to test it out.
Dedicating the Elementary School to Richie!
Echo Park lake!
Corey at work.
Plexiglass puddles.
Ramps will next to primed, painted and affixed with heavy duty velcro to fasten onto sidewalks on site.
Ramps at the start.
Many ramp beginnings.
Friday, July 31st. The past couple days have been busy. We hollowed out our “Look Both Ways” fiberglass component. It is ultralight weight and is ready to be handed over to our electrical expert for wiring and programing. We started in on painting once our flats were numbered and connected for ease of assembly. For the first time, we are creating a set for people other than ourselves to set up…so we want to make it as simple and easy as possible.
Steve sanding and routing nice edges on our flats
Our labeling system.
Mixing color!
Working out the master color pallet.
Extracting the mold from within our fiberglass mold.
Wednesday, July 29th. Yesterday we finished fiberglass work on our “Look Both Ways” component, affixed the track for our “Girl, Dog and Ball” game and started cutting into our flats and softening the edges of our frames.
Fitting the mold with multidirectional weave
laying down the tracks!
Our new skyline
Soft edges on frames. No splinters!
Fiberglass in action
Tuesday, July 28th. Our scenic painting team got started mapping out our street scenery. They will be working after hours for the next few days perfecting line work.
the projector at night
Progress so far…
The beginning of the periscope…
Dave getting the linear actuator ready for motion!
Sidewalks in works
Flats nearly ready to go!
Pro-typing kickers and jacks