How do you earn a place in a flower festival with a handful of Arduinos and a 3D printer? By building a water curtain that draws flowers. That’s exactly what Tecnoateneu Vilablareix, a hacking community in Spain did. They built this project specifically for Temps de Flors, a popular annual gathering in Girona, Spain. More than just a flower festival, the event opens gardens and courtyards of culturally importance to the general public that are closed the rest of the year.
The water curtain uses four Arduino Nanos to control the valves, which work in pairs to draw flowers, words, and patterns. A Mega provides a wifi connection to receive commands. Over 16 continuous days worth of print time went into the 128 valves and 64 nozzles that make up the water curtain. It took the group around 24 iterations to get the valve design just right—they have to be able to shut off quickly.
There’s an eight-video playlist after the break and a special video that shows how much we love pandering. Most of the ones in the playlist are quite short and demonstrate the final version of the water curtain. Others show the valve testing. The last is a time-lapse of the group setting it up at the festival. If you’re in the area, the festival runs until May 15th.
Now that you’re in the mood for computer-controlled water shows, here is a fountain controlled with a RaspPi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5qR4B-mO3E
Long live ingenuity!
Amen!
This is really nice!
Make a Awesome feature for Garden Gnome sales
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5qR4B-mO3E
Well done! The valve design could find quite a market in other applications as well – would love to know more about them.
The 3ders site had a rendering of the valve design.
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160509-3d-printed-water-curtain-makes-waves-at-temps-de-flors-flower-show-in-girona-spain.html
I would love to get a copy of the solidworks files. (How can a hackerspace afford that program?)
TPB
Let us some days … we are working to publish the entire project !
We minimized the valves cost with our 3D printed valves .. :)
Josep
Are any 3d print files, parts list, or more details available?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5WliWhBFHo
I also saw one in the Kyoto station. It’s a nice little oasis, tucked away out of the main traffic flow.
https://youtu.be/xb-gfTMtgu0
I think this idea was invented by Dave Shapiro (The Art of Motion Control) some 15 years ago.
..Dave as in Bruce Shapiro
I think the idea was obvious enough to be invented by many.
Simple and pretty art project though. More of these please.
I’m a bit disappointed that there are no design files available for the 3D printed valve parts.
(only this picture http://www.3ders.org/images2016/3d-printed-water-curtain-makes-waves-temps-flors-flower-show-girona-spain-15.jpg)
Definitely nice project and realization.
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