Cultivating Curiosity with Automated Edu-tainment

Crafting agricultural education experiences that are also fun is a specialty requiring a mix of creativity and technology.

Byline: Justin Hiemstra, Heemer Crafted

Capturing the interest of a young person today can be a tough task, especially considering the proliferation of mobile devices and the obsession with screen time. However, there are still important opportunities available to engage the next generation in topics as widespread as science, technology, art, and even agriculture.

The team at Heemer Crafted, located about two hours drive west of Toronto, has succeeded in this arena by applying a variety of industrial automation technologies to create tactile and interactive attractions and props. Farm owners are using these technology platforms to educate people in an entertaining way, while withstanding the rigors of enthusiastic interactions from attendees.

With a background in mechanical engineering technology, my early work experiences were at an industrial systems integrator (SI) firm creating automation solutions for a variety of industries, including mining, food & beverage, pharmaceutical, batch processing, and more. With a solid basis in designing, developing, and commissioning programmable logic controller (PLC) and human-machine interface (HMI) automation systems, I was ready when a new opportunity presented itself.

Encouraging Agri-tourism

My great-grandfather was a beekeeper, and to this day other family and friends are also in the farming and agriculture business. Although these operations are fundamentally about what is grown and produced, an important aspect for many organizations in this space is to entice guests to visit their physical sites. This agricultural tourism (agri-tourism) is a great way to connect with the community, provide some insight into the agriculture business, and increase revenue.

To make this successful, agriculture organizations need an attraction with kid-friendly exhibitions to turn their site into an adventure farm with tactile and interactive educational entertainment (edu-tainment) activities that encourage exploring. Anyone who has visited a contemporary museum will be familiar with what these displays look like, and how they encourage engagement and learning in an entertaining manner.

While farmers are generally known as resourceful and hands-on in many ways, their need to develop interactive attractions provided an ideal business opportunity, so I founded Heemer Crafted and got to work!

Technology for Planting the Seeds of Learning

The products and design principles essential for industrial automation are also very effective when applied to showmanship. One key to success at Heemer is the ability to select and implement the right technologies to pull off an entertaining user experience. We develop the attraction concept, pursue the best fabrication approach (which can include machining, welding, and other mechanical aspects), and then integrate the required electrical and controls technologies.

One of our earliest attractions is much like a large size see-and-sound board. It is called “Farm Sounds” (Figure 1), and guests can push a button to select one of three play modes. The first mode let the guests press a button near the picture of an animal to hear the sound it makes. The second mode is a trivia game where guests are given some facts about a particular farm animal, and they match the animal to the facts. The third mode is like the game “Simon”, where the board creates a series of farm animal sounds and guests try to repeat the sequence. If the guest succeeds, then the series gets progressively longer and more complex.

This functionality required implementing several technologies, and based on our familiarity and past success with the wide range of AutomationDirect products, our first stop is always to their website to find almost everything we need. In this case, the guest-facing elements are Captron capacitive pushbutton switches, which have no moving parts, so they are exceptionally durable—which is a great feature when countless kids are excitedly operating them. Each button features an LED light which operates when it is pushed, or when a controller operates it. This provides many options to improve user interactions and guide activity.

Behind the scenes, our go-to controller for monitoring signals and commanding outputs and animatronics is an AutomationDirect CLICK PLUS stackable micro modular PLC. This platform offers a multitude of useful capabilities, including easy programming using free software. Depending on the options selected, nearly any kind of input/output (I/O) signal can be accommodated, while built-in wired Ethernet and available Wi-Fi provide convenient connectivity. Wi-Fi is especially important for farm locations because they usually don’t have wired infrastructure, and they often cover large areas. Serial communications are available for specialty applications, such as communicating with some sound amplifier boards.

The “Farm Sounds” attraction is fairly straightforward, and the compact form factor of AutomationDirect products allowed us to design and build a small control panel (Figure 2). By monitoring discrete inputs to detect button pushes by guests, the PLC logic operates discrete outputs to command an MP3 sound player to create the appropriate sound.

Although there are many types of audio and show controllers used throughout the entertainment industry, most only perform very specific and specialized tasks. AutomationDirect PLCs are much more capable and flexible, providing the connectivity and programming needed to interface with these dedicated controllers so that the right effects can be created and integrated into the overall functionality.

Cultivating More Entertainment Possibilities

As Heemer has worked on more of these projects, the level of complexity and sophistication continues to increase. For one attraction, we needed to play multiple sound effect noises concurrently. To achieve this, we were an early adopter of the AutomationDirect ProductivityOpen, which is an industrialized Arduino-compatible controller able to work with industrial-grade PLC modules. Of special note, this controller can also work with Arduino “shield” modules for providing other advanced functionality.

In our case, this capability was essential because we used the ProductivityOpen P1AM-PROTO prototyping shield, which allowed us to create a two-port musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) connection for operating a synthesizer as needed. MIDI allows multiple sounds to be played concurrently (polyphony), which is not possible with many other interface types.

In another activity, guests operate a bellows to create smoke—generated by a fog machine—similar to what beekeepers use to keep the bees calm (Figure 4). Behind the scenes, a CLICK PLUS PLC monitors the bellows movement and triggers operation of a commercial fog machine. The PLC even controls a stepper motor damper valve which helps to create the realistic puffs of smoke. The PLC also commands a pump as needed to refill a small local day tank from a larger remote supply tank. An AutomationDirect float switch monitors the tank level, so the PLC can email a message to the farm staff when more of the fog-making solution is needed, or send an alarm if the pump runs unexpectedly long which indicates a failure.

The “Aeroballs” game encourages guests to experiment with how different sizes of foam balls can rise, fall, or float on varying air streams coming from pipes, demonstrating Bernoulli’s principle (Figure 5). Two Captron buttons, and other AutomationDirect-sourced components—such as an enclosure, timing relay, terminal blocks, and M8 connection cables—are used to control a single blower directing air to all eight pipe nozzles concurrently.

AutomationDirect products have played a crucial role in realizing our ever-more-complicated attractions. The Amazing Round-up game features a main display board which prompts two competitors to find a designated animal out in a maze (Figure 6a, 6b). They push the button when they find the animal, and their split times are displayed on an overhead ViewMarq message display.

Happy as a Pig in Slop

Because our clients do not typically have the means to troubleshoot these systems, they appreciate the proven-in-operation reliability of the automation platforms and components. We also take advantage of remote connectivity—built into the controllers—so we can support our client if needed, usually without having to travel to the site.

AutomationDirect’s website provides a truly one-stop-shopping experience. We can evaluate pricing and availability at a glance, which helps inform us of the best ways to proceed. There have been just a few instances where we needed some live technical support, either via chat or a conversation, and both types of interactions were responsive and top-notch.

Creating these engaging agri-tourism and edu-tainment props has required a careful combination of creativity, showmanship, craftsmanship, and technology. Throughout the process, AutomationDirect products and personnel have proven to be dependable partners in helping Heemer develop innovative attractions.

All photos courtesy of Heemer Crafted

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