Even our benches are cool and just as much thought, planning, and fun went into their development as we put into our other projects. In the final part of this blog series, find out even more about how our fabrication department took customer feedback and turned it into a project that is eye catching, flexible, and able to provide comfy breaks for people during gameplay.
Installation Date: 3/9/2019
Project Duration: 3 Weeks – 18 Benches
It was time to assemble the benches.
We went into mass production mode and as one sheet was cutting on the machine, we were assembling and preparing another one for painting.
This video is a time lapse of the full bench assembly process:
Once we had about 6 benches ready to be painted, we lined them all up and used a spray gun to apply 4 coats of durable polyurethane.
After we finished that, we began to prep all the lights. We first cut the led strips to the right size and then applied it to an aluminum backer. We then zip-tied the light strips to the benches. From there, we then applied all the other wires and the wifi controller and then–VOILA!–the benches were completed!
The modularity of the benches isn’t just in their shape, it’s also in the flexibility of the lighting system. Because we are using individually addressable LEDs for each bench, it is very easy to think up ideas for taking the benches to the next level. We could gamify them. Maybe the process would start with an idea of what game we want the benches to play, like say, maybe, Musical Benches or Duck Duck Goose? From there we could do some testing with different types of sensors that could monitor if there is a use sitting on the bench or not. Then using an Arduino we would pair those sensors to a game that can be played throughout multiple benches, building wide!
This could really enhance the experience for customers–turning what looks like a plain ol’ benches into something surprisingly interactive.
