ZEB Interactive Pieces:
Radiation, Convection, and HRV

BCIT had an exhibit showing off concepts for Environment Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) exhibit. The center piece of this exhibit was a small custom fabricated building made using some of those concepts alongside various interactive pieces showing how they worked,

These interactive pieces were what me and another fabricator were responsible for. They consisted of showing heat flow and cooling via a "Heat Recovery Ventilator" (HRV), heat convection, and heat radiating through various materials. The building itself, signage/graphics, and static lighting were made by other contractors, which we had to work alongside with to make sure things fit properly and looked presentable.

Finally, a guide was created and included for the exhibit maintainers for any field maintenance needed. This covered power requirements, spotting and troubleshooting any issues, as well as wiring diagrams if any rewiring needed to be done in the future.

For the pieces that we were responsible for, my core areas were the electronics (controllers, rotation speed sensor, and LEDs), programming (sensor input and animation), and creating the guide.

One added constraint was that each of the controllers had to be identical so that spares could be made and swapped into any piece that was damaged/non-working. To solve this, switches were added that could be changed to set different modes in each controller. This also meant that all the controllers needed to contain the logic for all the different pieces with limited memory.

The first piece, "Radiation" is made up of multiple sliding panels which altered an led display. The purpose was to show the effects of heat radiating through various materials.

The next piece, "Convection" was a smaller display where leds would illuminate based on how fast the wheel and fan was being spun by a visitor. The faster the wheel was spun, the "cooler" the display would be.

The final piece, "Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV)" consisted of long tubes filled with LEDs that would be animated in a wave-like pattern and change colour based on button input. This piece was the most complex to build as it used multiple smaller controllers that needed to be synced.