[Robotgroup] RoboSpinArt - halloween carnival beta test

[Paul Atkinson]

My thanks to Vern and all those who contributed to the creation of RoboSpinArt! Also thanks to Denise for providing cards and paint!

I got to borrow RSA for our church halloween carnival last night and it was a big hit. Vern added some halloween music and sound effects and tested it over at Jackie's Private School . The little kid's loved it and although some didn't really understand how it worked, they hammered away at the joystick and buttons and made art anyway! Some of the adults were having flashbacks of sorts to their old wind-up spin art machines! (I don't remember wind ups, just the electric ones.) There were quite a few questions about how RSA works, who made it, what the Robotgroup does, and "so that's where you disappear to on Thursday evenings!"

It seemed to be popular across a wide age range from those who were too small to see into the bucket without help, to a few brave grandparents. In general everything worked fine and we only had one card go flying - so the STOP button came in handy that one time. (The card wasn't fully aligned within the holder, so once the loose edge caught some air, it went soaring!)

I did see a few minor issues with the spin motor not behaving entirely as expected. There were about 6 times it didn't stop at the end ot the 30 second session. I resorted to pulling the power plug for those, since none of the buttons appeared to stop it. There were an equal number of cases where the spin motor failed to start as expected. A simple up-push on the joy stick fixed them. The failed start and failed stop incidents did not seem to be connected time-wise.

Priming and purging of paint worked as expected and I had a few watchers who were just fascinated by the process!

All in all it was a great addition to our halloween carnival! Thanks again for sharing the RoboSpinArt with the community!! 

Paul