Orlando Science Center
by Red Dot Digital Media | 2024 | Case Studies
Red Dot Digital Media Teams with Phenix Design Group to Bring Interactive Space Exploration to the Orlando Science Center
Location: Florida • Industry: Science Museum • 2024
Project Completion: Q4 2024
Equipment List:
- Bluefin V-Series touchscreen
- Nexmosphere colored LED buttons
- Custom-built Linux PC
- Trio of 55-inch Samsung monitors
Partners: Bluefin, Phenix Design Group, Mega Media Factory, Velasea PC, Nexmosphere
Background: The Orlando Science Center (OSC) is a Florida-based science museum that provides experience-based opportunities for visitors to learn about science and technology. For the past two decades, the Phenix Design Group (Phenix) provided OSC with interactive video kiosks and simulators for the museum’s annual Otronicon/SPARK STEM Fest events. A standout of the annual festivals was the Space Explorer – an immersive kiosk comprising three vertically oriented screens that enable the user to explore key parts of our solar system using Google Earth.
Following a successful redesign of the temporary kiosks for the Otronicom/SPARK STEM Fest, OSC decided to add the popular Space Explorer kiosk to the museum’s permanent collection.
When Phenix set out to update the design for use as a permanent exhibit, they turned to Red Dot Digital Media (Red Dot) to engineer an integrated hardware and software solution to power this next generation interactive kiosk.
Challenges: Given that the Space Explorer experience delivers Google Earth content via a PC, it was necessary to tailor the experience to give visitors control over the experience, without also giving them the ability to unintentionally (or intentionally) alter feature settings and other controls.
Therefore it was necessary to limit functionality visitors could access on their own, while reserving higher-level functions for OSC technical staff. Additionally, earlier iterations of the kiosk relied on a Windows-based system which struggled to meet the processing demands of the system due to Microsoft Windows’ excessive resource utilization for telemetry and other peripheral processes that were not critical to the museum experience.
” We very much enjoyed the collaboration with Darryl Kuder and his team. Red Dot was thorough and patient with us as we worked to get this project built and deployed on time.”
– Steve Handy, Co-Owner,
Phenix Design Group
Solution: Phenix engaged Red Dot to design an interactive experience to power the third-generation Space Explorer kiosk. Red Dot custom-built a Linux PC designed specifically to deliver the speed and graphics capabilities sought by OSC, with thereliability and durability required for daily use in a museum setting.
The PC manages all custom application interaction between the touchscreen, LED buttons and video outputs. User input is captured via a 15.6-inch Bluefin V-Series frameless touchscreen, a trio of Nexmosphere colored LED buttons and a manual joystick. The LED buttons enable users to choose whether they want to explore the Moon, Mars or Earth. The touchscreen displays a soft keyboard to provide search functionality and programmable soft keys to play back user-programmed tours.
This set of simple yet powerful controls make it possible for users to virtually visit any point on Earth, Mars or the Moon. The Bluefin touchscreen enclosure was designed and fabricated by Mega Media Factory, which ensured the enclosure was durable enough to withstand heavy use, while making sure the kiosk met Americans with Disabilities Act requirements for wheelchair accessibility.
Red Dot created a bespoke, password-protected maintenance interface for OSC technical personnel to use in conjunction with a keyboard and mouse physically secured within the kiosk’s enclosure.
“ Phenix’s request for this type of build was an opportunity we simply couldn’t pass up. It allowed us to flex our custom programming expertise while designing a creative hardware solution to deliver the high-quality results they envisioned. We look forward to helping them roll out more of these across the country this year.“
– Darryl Kuder, President of Red Dot Digital Media
Results: Red Dot successfully delivered a system that met all outlined objectives and incorporated pre deployment engineering improvements along the way. The Space Explorer now serves as a permanent educational attraction at OSC, using the latest technology to help visitors take part in self-driven, interactive space exploration.
