Multiple Ganglions in long-term science exhibition

tobi-pluraltobi-plural
edited February 2017 in Ganglion
Hey all!
we are planning to use your hardware (Ganglion Board + Ultracortex) for a long-term exhibition. What’s really important for us is being able to give as many visitors as possible the chance to try out the interactive exhibit. So our idea was to have three complete headsets in different head circumferences (Ganglion Board + Ultracortex) and just switch one ON as soon as everything is setup and adjusted.

With some experience with Arduino and Bluetooth, my biggest concern is that there’ll be a lot of connectivity issues when switching ON/OFF the headsets/boards. Also there shouldn’t be any device selection inside the GUI needed – that’d distract the guides and exhibition itself.   

Does anyone had a similar setup already? Do you see a good chance with this kind of setup: Multiple headsets with a Plug & Play behaviour.

Would be really nice hearing your opions on this!

Cheers,
Tobi

Comments

  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    Some Windows 10 laptops, such as the HP Stream are only around $200. It might be easiest just having 3 different computers, one for each station / headset.

    Otherwise you will need to mod the GUI to select different Bluetooth devices. The hard part would be figuring out which one was 'active' and switching in / out. You might need new code that monitors all three devices at once, etc.

  • tobi-pluraltobi-plural
    Hey William – thanks for your thoughts!
    It's definitely a good option to simply use one computer for each headset. I gonna strip down / rework the GUI anyway – I just wasn't really sure if I get a kind of plug&play version running, so every guide in the museum can setup the exhibit quickly.
    A possible way could be to reinitialize one of the three headsets by just offering one "reconnect" hardware button for the guides (or even run a reconnect function every x seconds) – by knowing the port names of each device I can run listPorts(), look for one of my known ports and start a new connection on that port. I'm probably missing the key problem, but it for now it looks like a doable solution ;) – would be happy if you/anyone questions that approach!

    Thanks again for your help!
  • biomurphbiomurph Brooklyn, NY
    It's not possible to 'plug-n-play' with the current version of the GUI. There is a 'middleware' piece, called the Ganglion Hub, that is doing the work to connect and communicate to the Ganglion. Right now, the GUI needs to 'release' the Ganglion, and then you have to manually select a different Ganglion board from the menu.

    That said, the Hub is pretty robust. You may be able to mod the GUI to do what you want, if you already know the Ganglion advertisement strings of the boards you have...
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