The Twelve-Foot Network.

Don’t tell me I don’t have a plan.

I’ve been averaging about 12 hours each day on Machine Horror House. And yesterday, I woke up just hating it. So I spent just about all of yesterday playing XBox and watching episodes of The League. A little tinge of guilt hit me in the evening, and I put together two boxes for controlling the Kinects. And then I chastised myself harshly for feeling guilty about relaxing, drank a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, and watched some Alias on Netflix. Yes, sometimes I feel guilty about feeling guilty. This is how my head works.

Today, I’m back in it, putting together the network for the See-Stage. It was previously working for a system with two Kinects and one projected screen. Now I need it to work with six Kinects and three projected screens. Each pair of Kinects needs one “K2Net Node,” which is a computer that converts USB data to Ethernet traffic. The K2Nets feed data into the “Model Server”, which is a computer that keeps a single combined set of data from all six Kinects. Each screen needs one “Renderer”, which is a computer running Flash that also receives data from the Model Server.

All of these puppies are 12 feet up in the air on my nifty shelves, which is a bit of a hassle. I basically have to make sure every component is running some remote access software, or I will be up and down the ladder a hundred times a day to make updates. The reason the components have to be close is that HDMI and USB cables have difficulties over long distances. Well, actually the HDMI is probably fine for this installation. I’m considering buying some 25-foot cables and bringing the Renderer boxes down to the ground.