Adding a second screen/projector

In one of my previous posts, I went through the process of building a DIY projector screen.  I'm going through the process again.  I'm adding a second projector to the right hand side of our kid's church room.

I'm planning to have it so it can show the same video as the main projector or have an independent image.  During worship and bumper-type videos, the images will be the same on both.  But during games, I'll have ScoreKeep (from Digital Stache) up on one screen and whatever video is needed on the other.  Probably something like a Minute to Win It timer or something.

I'll update this post with the progress in the next few weeks.

I'm considering using this VGA Matrix switcher to control which video goes to which monitor.  I'm not sure how well it will work, but for the price, it is hard to go wrong.

 

Update as of 07/25/13:  I haven't had a lot of time to post lately because of VBS.  But we did get this solution in place.  Now we have two projectors/screens.  We use the Matrix VGA switcher from Monoprice.  Here's a couple of pictures:

This picture shows the screens with the projectors off



This image shows the screens with the projectors on.  Both projectors are throwing the same image.  Notice the difference in image quality.  Even though they are pretty much the same projector, the newness of one is a big jump over the other.   We played with the brightness and whiteness quite a bit, but weren't able to get it any closer.  I guess that's one downside to using cheap projectors.



Unless there's a lot of white in the background, they looks pretty much identical.



 

This image shows the front of the Matrix switcher.  The left button contols the left projector.  The right button the right projector.  You press the button to select source 1, source 2, or nothing.



 

This image shows the back of the VGA Matrix switcher.  There are two sources (both computers) and two outputs (both projectors).



 

The only issue we've seen is that the Matrix switcher isn't an instant switch.  It takes a bit for the image to change.  This caused two issues.  One the projector would think the image dropped and display its logo.  To fix this, we changed the projector settings to only display a black screen and not the logo.  The second issue was that during the change, the projector would begin searching for a signal.  Again, we simply turned this off in the projector settings.  No big deal.

Soon I want to make a quick video showing how everything works.

 

Break My Heart Game - Part 3

Here's the final product:



Here's a few pictures of the gameboard during the game.

   

The kids had to answer questions to earn a chance to punch the board and win a prize.  Today we only had prizes behind the paper.  In the next few weeks we might add a few "funny" things behind the boards.

I guess the design works OK, but it is a pain to get the buckets on and off the board.  The method of screwing on the handles works, but it might need some refinement.  I think in the future, I might try to come up with a way to use boards with a slit.  The slit would hold the lips on the buckets.  Then I could slide them on/off the board.

Here's a picture of the gameboard after all prizes were claimed:



 

The kids had to answer questions to earn a chance to punch the board and win a prize.  Today we only had

Break My Heart Game – Part 2

I spent some time tonight working on the Break My Heart game that we'll use this coming weekend.

I pulled out one of the Matchy Madness boards:



I stopped by Dollar Tree to look for buckets to use to hold the prizes.  I found this as a possible solution.  It was close to the correct size.  Maybe a little small though.



I went ahead and tried to put it on the board to see how it worked.

  

It kinda fit, but the screws just barely fit around the edge of the opening.  So I wasn't happy.  Once the tissue paper was put in the opening, I wouldn't be able to see where to put the screws.  I'm sure I would end up splitting the wood.  So I went to a different Dollar Tree.  This one had a different bucket.  I originally had been looking for buckets only that had a decent lip so I could screw into the lip and secure it to the game board.  But I found the following bucket.



This bucket has almost no lip, but it does have a couple of handles that I can use to secure it to the gameboard.

Here's a couple of the buckets positioned where they would need to go:



To secure the buckets, I'm using small screws and washers to hold down the handles:



Here's the board with three of the buckets secured to the board:



 

So now I'm going to pull the buckets off.  I'll let my wife cover the openings with tissue paper and fill the buckets with prizes.  Then I'll put all 9 buckets in place.  The final step will be to build a stand to hold the gameboard at just the right height.  I'll post pictures of the finished product this weekend.

 

 

Break My Heart Game - Part 1

Me and my wife were in Arkansas a few weeks ago while my mom was having surgery.  Sitting in the hospital, we ended up watching a lot of TV.  One of the shows we watched (which I had never seen before) was The Chew.  At one point they had a game where people had to answer questions to earn turns to punch their hand into a game board to win prizes or get surprised by what was inside.  They called the game He Said, Cheese Said (the entire episode was about cheese).

Here's a video link to the game.

http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/episodes/January-15-2013    When you go to this link, there is a link in the episode clips called "He Said, Cheese Said".  That's the link to the game.

Once we saw it, we looked at each other and decided it would make a great Kid's Church game (with a few modifications).

So we started thinking about how to build it.  It sounded just like the game I made previously called Matchy Madness.  So we decided we would simply modify one of the game boards we used for Matchy Madness.

I grabbed one of the boards out of the shed.  Then I pulled everything off of it.  We're now thinking through how to make the game work.  We're proabably going to call it Break My Heart since we are starting a series on Love.  My wife came up with the idea to use Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker.  So we found a Karaoke version on Amazon.    I built a bumper with BluffTitler.  It's a very east way to create 3D text.  My wife's going to pull it into Premiere Pro and add the music and create the final video.

Once we get some more done, I'll post some pics of the finished product.

How Color Changing LED Lights Effect Painted Wood

First off, I'm not really sure that title makes sense.

When I was helping my wife build our "3D" logo for our Kid's Church Room, we ran across an interesting effect that was created when we shined a LED light on the different colors of the wood.

The following picture shows the logo itself.



After we put up the logo, we were trying to figure out how to make it stand out.  We had recently bought a Chauvet Color Palette.  At time we didn't have a DMX controller in the Kid's Room.   We were just planning to use it to change colors during the fast P&W songs.

We decided to just point the light at the logo and see what happened.  We programmed the Color Palette to constantly change colors.

Here's what it looks like with the lights full on in the room:

https://vimeo.com/52977195

You can see there is some points when certain colors kinda "glow" or "black out".  But with the house lights on, the effect isn't that great.

Here's a video of logo with the LED going.  But the house lights are off:

https://vimeo.com/52977273

You can see there are times certain colors go completely black.  Then times when certain colors seems to "glow".  You can also notice, the pink color seems to almost change to blue.  Very intersting effect.

Here's a video of the color palette.  Just so you can see what it is doing.  Of course, the colors don't translate very well with a cell phone taking the video.

https://vimeo.com/52977194

We were so impressed with the effect, we made some test materials for our sanctuary.  Just simply some horizontal boards painted different colors.  Then we could change the LED uplights to certain colors to make certain boards "glow".  It was really cool with the stage lights off, but once the stage lights were on, it was too much light and killed the effect.

I'd be interested to see what anyone else might have used this effect for.

Using Google SketchUp to visualize your Kid's Church design.

My wife had figured out a logo she wanted to use for our Kid's Church.  I was wanting to build a 3D type logo to hang on the wall behind the stage.  I was trying to explain to my wife what I wanted to build, but really didn't do a very good job.  I had used Google SketchUp before to import 3D objects into After Effects.  So I thought it would be a great tool to use to visualize the logo.  The best thing about it, is that you can look at the design from any angle.  And yes, I use the Free version.  I have no need for the Pro version.

Here's a few pictures of the logo in SketchUp.

     

So anyway, I'm not going to go into how to use SketchUp.  Google did a great job of providing a ton of videos and help pages on Sketchup.  All the pieces I used for the Logo, were objects that I made.  There is an extensive 3D Warehouse.  That contains tons and tons of models that people have made and shared.  You'll see a lot of those when you see what we did with SketchUp next.

After we had designed the logo, my wife wanted to really change around the Kid's Church room.  It is also used as a kitchen, reception area, but we were given premission to make it look like a kids room.  My wife wanted to be able to visualize what it would look like with all her ideas.  And also she wanted to be able to show our Lead Pastor what her ideas were.  So I thought SketchUp would be perfect for this.

So the first thing we did was go take measurements of everything in the room.  We measured every wall (height and length).  We measured our portable stages.  We measured the doors.  We measured the cabinets/lockers/appliances.  Everything we could.

So I started in SketchUp by creating the basic layout of the room and creating the walls.   Then I found some doors in the 3D Warehouse.  They weren't 100% the size I needed, but they were close enough.  The one thing I've noticed about the 3D Warehouse, is some objects aren't to scale with the other objects.  You'll simply need to scale them up/down to make them fit correctly.



You can see in the above picture all the items we added.  We added the lockers in the back of the room.  We added the appliances in the kitchen part.  We added the folding chairs.  We add the speakers and the video screens.  We added the TV's where our video game station would be.  We added the sound/video station in the back of the room.  The ideas are endless here.  You can find almost anything you need in the 3D Warehouse.  You may not find the exact make/model of speakers, but you'll find some that are close.  And again, this is just for visualization.

Once you get the room designed exactly like you want.  You can create Scenes.



You can find how to make scenes and make a video of the camera moving from scene to scene.   You can simply google search "sketchup fly through scenes" to find some videos with very simple instructions.

Here's the fly through video We made https://vimeo.com/54210764

I'm surely not an expert with SketchUp.  But I'm pretty proud of the results.

The video feels jerky at times, but hey, it is just for providing a way to visualize our ideas.

So my next project was to layout of sanctuary.  I got started, but only ended up doing the stage.  I ran into issues with getting the steps to look right.  Maybe one day I'll finish.

Plinko Game Construction

UPDATE: 08/29/17 - I saw a new Plinko type game at a trade show.  See my new post here:  New Plinko – Pinball Plinko?

 

If you don't want to make your own Plinko, here's some "premade" Plinko type games on Amazon:

White Prize Drop Game

Disk Drop Game

Portable Plinko Game

Midway Monsters Drop Zone Express Customizable Plinko Carnival Game

Prize Drop

 

I had always loved the Plinko game on the Price is Right gameshow.

This youtube clip shows a video of the Plinko game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNd8JaAXHic

We decided to build one for a game in our Kid's church. I google (or bing) searched and found a few people that had built some awesome ones. Some were way to complicated for me. I did get a great idea from one post. And it was to use pegboard. I bought a sheet of pegboard from Home Depot. I got a 2' X 4' board. So that's how big my Plinko board turned out to be. I started with the board and had to decide what to use as the pegs. I ended up using bolts. Mostly because I had a stack of them that seemed to be the perfect size. Figuring out the spacing will kind of depend on the "puck" size you are going to use. The good thing about the pegboard is that you can put your posts (bolts) in and move the puck around and make sure it fits everywhere correctly.



For pucks, we found an interesting solution. You can buy reflectors at Amazon: Blue Reflectors We bought 3 sets. I popped the blue reflectors out of the holders. Each reflector had a "peel and stick" backing. So I removed the paper on each one and stuck two together. This made it reflective on both sides and slick on both sides. It worked perfect. It moved quick and had a nice "pop" when it hit the bolts. But it also wasn't too heavy as to bend/break the bolts.



I also think these Air Hockey pucks would work great: Air Hockey Pucks

I added a few things to the board to complete it. To keep the puck in play, I added teeth shaped boards on each side. To cut these I simply put the board over the edges, and marked the holes (where bolts would go on the edges). Then draw lines between the points and cut them out with a jig saw.



We added a sign at the top. This was a yellow oval sign from Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202256499/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=yellow+oval+sign&storeId=10051

We cut it in half and my wife added the Plinko text.

At the top of the gameboard, make sure you leave enough space for the kids to drop in the pucks. At the bottom, make sure to leave enough space for the landing. We could typically hold three pucks at the bottom in one landing point. We added a piece of wood at the bottom that would hold the pucks in place. Then the wood "swiveled" out of the way to let the pucks drop after the turn. During the first few test runs, I noticed the puck would randomly fly off of the gameboard. To solve this I added a piece of plexiglass to the front of the gameboard. I had some left from a previous project. It was actually part of an old drum shield our church used when we were meeting in the schools.



We just sit the game on a picture/art stand. In the future, if we use it again, I'll probably add some 2X4's for a stand. I like them being totally independant. Where they stand on their own.

If anyone reading this (if anyone does) and makes their own Kid's church games, I would love to see some pictures. I'm always looking for new ideas.

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