The iPad Video Wall
I am happy to report that the iPad Video wall has grown up from a prototype to a fully fledged finished project. If you have been following the blog then you would have saw the prototype video of the wall’s proof of concept and watched a single movie playing over all 8 iPads. Well I’ve been hard at work in the workshop with laser cutters, hammers, routers, and vices and we have a finished product which is ready to go.
The iPad Wall consists of 12 iPads in a 4×3 configuration housed in a custom designed wooden frame which is only 23mm thick. All the iPads are powered from a single power source again housed inside the frame which charges the iPads when needed. The wall, in its current configuration, displays data from City-Dashboard and allows users to interact with the data. By touching some of the iPad’s, the view flips to a historic graph of data over the last 24 hours. We can show individual videos on any of the iPads and we usually show the live stream of BBC News 24 on iPad number 11 which allows us to keep up with all the latest news happening around the world.
When we have visitors in the office we can grab our mobile phones and open up the iPad Video Wall mobile application and play one of the six visualization videos we have created for the wall. These videos play over all 12 iPads creating a virtual video wall that gives the illusion that you are looking through a window. The effect is fantastic when you view it in person as you can see in the video below.
I envision that a wall like this can be used in decision making, giving an insight into what is happening in real-time. Unlike traditional walls, which are heavy bulky, and fixed to walls, the iPad Video Wall is very portable and can be moved around the office where-ever it is needed. It also opens up new interaction designs for the traditional video wall. By having 12 touch screens we can come up with new methods to interact with real-time data. The wall was funded through a generous grant by UCL Enterprise and forms an output to the Talisman project
In the following days I’ll be posting up a few blog entries on how I built the wall and how the software works so that you can get a real behind the scenes look at the current state of the wall.
I’m @frogo on Twitter. If you get a chance then you should follow me.