Chroma-Key
The Croma-key Display at the Cumberland Science Museum in Nashville, TN lets museum guests participate in an real time video production environment.

By using a Croma-Key video editor, the participants are put right in the picture by replacing everything that is blue with a second video source. This produces the effect of being in a a scene that has been previously recorded.

A Video Laser Disk Player is used to provide the second video source. One of 6 different scenes can be selected from a control panel by the participant by pressing a button next to a picture of the scene that he/she would like to appear in.

A power saving feature turns off the lights if no one has been in the display for 5 minutes.

One OOPic is used to control all of the functions of the Croma-Key display.
Here you can see a picture of the Laser Disk Player that provides the video background source. It has an RS232 serial input that is used to provide instructions of what track to seek to and when to play and stop.

The RS232 instructions are provided by the OOPic in response to a participant pressing one of the 6 buttons on the control panel.

If the power save feature is activated, a special video clip is also selected and played.
The OOPic is mounted inside the cabinet just above the Laser Disk Player. It is connected to a proto-board that has a serial-TTL to RS232 Chip, a status bar LED and connections for all the I/O cables.
  • One cable is used to connect the OOPic to the 6-Button control panel
  • One cable is used to connect the RS232 Chip to the Laser Disk Player.
  • One cable is used to control a Solid State Relay for the overhead lights.
  • One cable is used to connect the OOPic to a reflective detector used to tell if someone is in the display area.
The OOPic's hardware interface consists of the following Hardware Objects:
  • 1 oSerial Object used to communicate with the Laser Disk Player
  • 6 oDio1 Objects used to read the control panel's buttons
  • 1 oDio8 Object used to display a status on the LED bar
  • 1 oDio1 Object to control the Solid State Relay
  • 1 oDio1 Object to read the reflective detector.

 

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