Deus Ex Machina — The Cannibal's Eye

A quick accounting of the technologies and components used to make the Cannibal's Eye work. Almost every one of these providers — especially Falcon Christmas and HolidayCoro — proved indispensable to making everything function.

Brains

Raspberry Pi Model 3
Falcon Pi Player — Daniel Kulp

The same show-control platform that synchronizes Christmas light displays to music, repurposed here to sequence a tiki volcano. The sequence runs to Bwana Bwana. The volcano approves.

Brawn

AlphaPix 4 — HolidayCoro
DMX Relay Controller
DMX Four-Channel Light Controller
Philips Hue
Fog Machine

The AlphaPix drives the lava channel pixel lighting. The DMX relay triggers the fog machine on sequence. Philips Hue handles the ambient room shifts. When the volcano erupts, every light in the room knows about it.

The Build

Design & Construction — Ignacio "Notch" Gonzales
Art Direction, Set Design & Flogging — Boo Loo Brenda
Lighting Design & Integration — Krakatoa G.
Show Sequencing — Krakatoa G.

Notch built the physical world — the lava rock texture, the tropical canopy, the bar structure, the woven walls, the artifacts in their places. Krakatoa G. wired the soul into it.

Timeline

October 2016 — Construction begins
December 2016 — Structure complete
Early 2017 — Lighting & tech integration
April 1, 2017 — First guests explore the island

Tīmata — In the Beginning

The Build

There were white walls. A white ceiling. Four regular doors, a furnace door, and a large sliding glass door that opened to the patio. Then Notch arrived.

October 2016 — Before

The room as it was: white walls, white ceiling, a blank canvas with potential and nothing else. The vision existed only in the heads of Boo Loo Brenda and Krakatoa G.

October – December 2016 — The Build Begins

Notch started framing the world. The volcano structure takes shape. Woven bamboo walls go up. The bar bones emerge from raw lumber.

Early 2017 — Integration

Krakatoa G. wires the volcano. The AlphaPix comes online. The Raspberry Pi learns the sequence. The fog machine takes its place in the caldera. For the first time, the mountain breathes.