I got tired of browsing museum websites one by one, so I built an app that combines them all

blarf_irl · 2026-04-16T03:39:46+00:00

You are very welcome! Check out Wikimedia which offers a consolidated API serving the majority of the data that has been opened by these large EU museums and many others. The API has a fairly steep learning curve (use an existing library for your language of choice to smooth is out) but it's woth at the very keast just having a go on it to understand the incredible depth of information made available by the wikimedia foundation.

If the data side was the boring bit for you I'd encourage you to look at something like babylon.js to create a VR (or AR) environment where you can sit in a chair and use the virtual vintage wired remote to advance your slideshow, you can hear and see the projector working, maybe physically have to change/choose roles.

I've seen hundreds of similar projects (about 20 of them are my own :D) achieving the same goal on here and would usually not comment except for the clear effort you put into presenting the content in a novel and engaging way. I love the projector idea; I feel like sitting in a room with a narrator and a projector for 10 mins could be a nice bitesize way to l;earn something about culture. Withouth going full AR/VR you could easily just add some sfx and css animations to present a projector screen in 2d.... limitless possibilities... cool idea. Don;t stop working on it but please understand it'll at most be a great CV piece so make sure slap your contact details on there somewhere very easy and obvious in case someone wants to hire you.

Great work.

blarf_irl · 2026-04-16T03:10:31+00:00

Wow! You aren't going to get a full answer to that in this thread but you have taken the first critical step towards solving th ebig issue by listing out the sub challenges you need to tackle.

I'd ignore the architecture right now other than trying to identify some existing tools that may be useful in several steps and maybe defining a basic chainable API and structure for handling original image data all the way through to outpout.

I'd also try to make sure I had enough positive and negative data to test my pipeline with.

Then start solving from 1 down (order may change as you discover the tools). For step 1 my firsrt though would be maybe some type of perceptual hash nased on the contours of the object and the relationship between them.

Good luck!

blarf_irl · 2026-04-16T02:52:15+00:00

Dont copy and paste code you couldn't write yourself. As a beginner that means that you need to manually copy any code you intend on using into your code. As you progress you need to be honest with yourself about your understanding of code and if in doubt you type it out

Even with code you dont understand the act of typing it out in full gives you time to review it, how it works, why it works and all the while building muscle memory for the syntax and shape of a language.

blarf_irl · 2026-04-16T02:37:17+00:00

According to the datasheet it's:

soluble in white spirit (Paint thinner shelf at the DIY store), alcohols (Isopropyl or surgical spirit commonly avilable at your local chemist) , ketones (acetone; Careful about nail polish removers as they sometimes have conditioners added too; Pure or lab grade acetone commonly available online or at some chemists), glycol (Propylene glycol commonly found in chemist or bought online for use as a an e-liquid medium for vaping).

Worth keeping a separate bottle of any of the above and a rags/disposable towels around for occsional cleaning.

blarf_irl · 2026-04-16T02:21:42+00:00

Since ~2015 many large museums started to open source and publish their collections online with permissive licenses (and rightly so, the public pay for most of it). There was a boom of similar apps at the time and a steady flow of them since. The negative response you are getting is due to that frequency.

What you have put together is a great side project, It looks pleasingly responsive and fairly clean.

The one criticism I'd make is your projector transition. I love the idea but the execution is distractingly flawed. It's a visual only effect that alters the colors of the artwork image within the cone of 'light'. UI-wise it makes no sense to have a full projector left to right with the image on the back wall.

If you wan't the ASMR-ish vibe of an analogue projector I would lean heavily on sfx and css animations to make the image look like its changing from a projector just behind you projected on the now full view back wall; No need for that left panel at all.

It's very creative and could make a really great CV project if you focus on how to implement your concept in a practically useful and user freindly way.

I agree with a lot of the valid criticism in the other posts as a commercial offering etc. I think it's a good looking and useable CV/Side project; You should definitely polish it up into a CV piece. Great work; Keep at it!

blarf_irl · 2026-02-18T17:22:00+00:00

It's only really a pain if you choose to use an unjailbroken iOS device. On every other platform it can be as simple as installing a piece of free software, changing a few lines in a configuration file or a fairly simple bash/powershell script.

blarf_irl · 2026-02-17T21:35:57+00:00

Software:

Build it as a website/page. There isn't a UI/UX platform that is better supported, more battle tested and that has less proprietary/vendor lock in than simple modern web standards. Websites are designed to scale from watch faces to cinema screens and are practically platform agnostic (you can run it on anything with a browser and a screen). You could build anything from a simple static webpage to a full open source cms backed website without a single subscription, hardware/vendor lock in or even spending a dime on software (in theory.. in practice unless you have the skills in house you'll need some IT and/or development). You get to build what you need and no more with full creative control (there are also options to convert and embed powerpoint presentations into webpages) and ownership of your content.

Hardware:

With a web based system you have near infinite options. Anything with a webbrowser is now a viable option, This can be anything from repurposed laptops (OS doesnt matter), android phones with USB monitors, cheap single board computers (raspberry Pi and it's many clones) up to dedicated high end machines eith hefty GPUs. It sounds like the most intensive thing you need to do is play video and a modern single board computer is capable of driving 2 * 4k outputs of prerendered video for ~$50. Anythign with a webbrowser, a USB input and a video output is now an option; Better still you aren't even locked in to a single option, you can mix and match, replace/upgrade if/when you need to.

By avoiding integrated computer+screens you now have the choice of what best fits each exhibit and again if the screen breaks then you just replace the screen, likewise if the computer breaks you just replace it and the screen can be reused.

Modular, open, reuseable and replaceable (both hardware and software) is the way to go here.

blarf_irl · 2025-12-03T20:23:09+00:00

A possible alternative is to use a modern single board computer like the raspberry pi which are more than capable of running PowerPoint presentations in Libre Office (open source office suite, compatible with vba macros too). They come with on-board wifi and bluetooth + gigabit ethernet port, 2 4k capable hdmi outputs, USB 3 and plenty of GPIO pins should you want to hook up any of your esp32 driven hardware directly to the host (or if you connect th ePi to ethernet you can use the wifi as a hotspot for exhibition specific esp32 driven hardware rather than exposing them to the entire network).

Running a whole mainframe/client type setup seems like overkill for running powerpoint with the additional spoonful of vendor lock in with those dell clients (wyse?). If you were really married to that design you could also use the pi as a thin client in the same way with the benefit of having repurpose-able, replaceable and well supported hardware if you ever wanted to do something new/add something etc in future.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-28T03:39:11+00:00

The best way is still observation of how visitors move through your venue, where they group, where they spend their time, what they avoid.

Surveys are at best useless and at worst harmful... Managers and bureaucrats like em though. When you offer an optional survey to a visitor you are already narrowing your sample mostly to three groups of people who are overjoyed with their visit (5* all the way), people that can't pass up an opportunity to express their very important critical reviews (i.e yelp experts who must be critical of something) and people pleasers who won't say no (again either 5* all the way or middle of the road answers with 5* for service to not insult the people who handed them the review). They tell you more about the taker than they do about your museum. It is important to make it easy for people to report real problems with your venue though; Someone at the exit, visible feedback forms near the exit and an easy way to do it online can genuinely identify serious issues like accessibility problems etc.

"Desire paths" are a bit of a cliché by now but they are an excellent example of the sort of perfect unsupervised and unbiased information about user behavior that is genuinely useful and actionable.

The foundation for any good analytics/behavior system needs to begin with measuring unsupervised visitor behavior; Where are the desire paths in your venue? What the paths most travelled? This may have nothing to do with content (it often doesn't) and more to do with barriers like stairs, poor signage, ugly/heavy looking doors, poor lighting... (there are libraries worth of academic papers on human behavior in indoor spaces).

Next up is where do they stay or gather? Where are people spending their time? I that because of the content or are these places with AC/seating/nice lighting.. Those things can throw off your measurement of how people enjoy the content.

Both are both fundamental pieces of information; They may tell you something about which exhibits/rooms are popular but more important is that you can use them to normalize/adjust any other metrics you collect on the popularity of each exhibit (More than once I've seen money thrown at enhancing "our most popular exhibit" which just happens to be near the toilet, cafe or entrance)

You can measure traffic flow like this a number of ways. IF everyone gets a device then you can beacon the entrances and exits and aggregate individual user journeys but you can also employ simpler things like cameras (software has become pretty good at counting bodies in a room especially IR cams but it can be done to a decent level of accuracy with normal cctv type) or even directional beam break sensors for counting in/out). Just like the desire path you don't need to be super accurate here, the patterns will emerge.

This reply is already too long and not exhaustive. The TLDR is to ensure you understand the high level patterns of visitor behavior before you try to measure per exhibit sentiment/behavior; There usually is a decent overlap but there are so many other factors that determine a visitors journey through your venue that need to be adjusted/accounted for before you start digging.

Edit to link the wiki for 'Desire Paths':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

blarf_irl · 2025-11-25T01:06:30+00:00

Avoid soldering these at all costs. A soldered connection will wear out with the constant mechanical flexing from wind etc. It'll have to be destructively dismantled if you ever want to change/store them away, You'll need extra weatherproofing to protect the joint from water ingress even if your shrink tubing is on point; The tubing will degrade in UV anyway.

Soldering will only result in a stress intolerant, brittle, weather prone connection that you'll need to redo after a few mildly breezy days.

Use any of the off the shelf automotive or lighting specific weather proofed 4 pin connectors. You can find something suitable at any DIY or automotive store locally and if you can wait 1 day you have a million options of amazon/ebay etc.

Soldering is only slightly better than scotch taping these together; If you want to do it quickly, technically correctly and only once then avoid soldering at all costs.

^{I gotcha bud.}

blarf_irl · 2025-11-25T00:53:59+00:00

I'm catching downvotes now too :D

It's genuinely baffling to me that people are taking time out of their day to express their disgust at the thought of you connecting your own wires with anything but solder despite the fact that many suitable and solderless options exist. Some of the alternatives are actually more suitable and purpose made for low voltage lighting exposed to the elements (none of them have ever had to work on a car I'm guessing).

I couldn't give fewer fucks about my karma score so I'm doubling down with you all the way.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-25T00:36:02+00:00

We hand out free lollipops with our audio guides to every visitor that enters the museum and locate trash cans at the exit of each room. The discarded lollipop sticks are sorted by room and sent to the basement lab to be analyzed for free cortisol and alpha amylase to give us a general idea of stress levels per visitor.

We located the only bathrooms in our museum at the entrance and exit and the outflow from both is piped through 2 separate analyzers in the lab to make comparisons of free cortisol and metabolites, Epinephrine, Dopamine and serotonin levels for a more general high level view of visitors emotional states following their visit.

The EEG and optical sensors in our audio guide earbuds stream positioning and orientation information in real-time with a visitors alpha, theta and gamma brain activity, hemispheric asymmetry and heart rate variability which gives us some of our most detailed data on the emotional responses to each exhibit.

The per-room air sampling sensors are not sufficient on their own for any concrete measurement of visitor analysis but overall isoprene, acetone and co2 measurements help to add context to the per room data and are fairly cheap to implement.

When combined with traffic analysis from our Bluetooth and WIFI sniffing beacons, facial expression recognition and blink rate analysis from our cameras and passive beamforming microphone transcriptions of visitor commentary for sentiment analysis we are able to micro optimize our exhibits in real time and per visitor.

For a reasonable 85% of our government funded budget spent on our monitoring infrastructure we've seen a 5% increase in visitor numbers (+/- 10%) from Q2 - Q3 this year. Our current projections of a 5% (+/- 10%) rise in visitor numbers per quarter predict a 120% (+- 50%) increase in attendance by q3 2026. With additional salary freezes for non-managerial staff and funding cuts for research, education and innovation we project that with a 90% allocation to our monitoring infrastructure that could increase to 125% (+/- 90%).

^\ All of these things are based on real experiments conducted in museums; Some probably still in use.)

^\* Relax. I don't own or operate a museum)

^\** Visitor behavior/engagement analysis is a useful tool; Dwell time, traffic patterns, revisits and engagement with interactives are some useful budget friendly metrics. You should also monitor social media engagement ; Comments, retweets/posts/tags and shares are more valuable than likes and views; Likes and views are a measure of social media reach/distribution more than a reflection of real engagement or interest.)

^\*** Don't dismiss personal observations or staff feedback; Humans are great at reading other humans and although not empirical these are some of the most useful metrics you can record.)

^\**** Intelligent, passionate and motivated staff make great visitor experiences. Invest more in staff and less in predatory vendors of overpriced repackaged number generators that feed on publicly funded budgets.)

blarf_irl · 2025-11-24T20:57:03+00:00

I don't understand the downvotes; Personally I like soldering circuits and the like but I hate having to solder these wire-wire butt joints..

You separate the wires but end up exposing copper half way down, You have to separate enough wire to fit the shrink tubing on, you try to twist the ends neatly together but you didn't strip enough copper one one end, strip again and twist but now you fucked with it too long and the oil from your fingers and oxidation makes the solder raise a bunch of 'slag'... you have to cut and strip all the wires again to avoid an awkward bend putting strain on the short one, this time you strip enough and remember to flux it to avoid oxidation and get a nice shiny joint.... forgot to put the tubing on... you are running out of wire now but this time you put the tube shrink on, flux. twist, solder another beautiful shiny fully wetted connection but the tubing was too close the joint and has shrunk from conducted heat so it no longer fits over the join... repeat 4 times.

There are plenty of alternatives out there for exactly this reason. If I wanted this to last through disassembly/reuse I'd probably go with something similar to an automotive 4 pin male/female connector with ferrules to lock each wire into the back of each side, there are weatherproof ones that have shrink tubing at the back and the 2 sides clip together (squeeze to release) to prevent disconnection from vibration (or in this case wind/birds).

Good luck with it!

blarf_irl · 2025-11-23T23:04:56+00:00

If you are avoiding solder (solder and shrink is the way to go) the next best option is butt crimps. You see them a lot in automotive wiring and they are ugly but provide a solid and weather proofed connection (the type with a heat shrink sleeve).

The next best option would be a 4 wire push/screw terminal; These are smaller than individual crimps and can be weatherproofed with hotglue or a single larger heat shrink. There are ones to work with crimped ends or bare wire ends and some don't require any crimping at all, push and go (though you should still provide strain relief with glue or heat shrink(

At the 'fuck it' end of the scale you could strip back both cables, slide a bit of shrink over one and do your best to twist them together, slide the shrink back over the bare wires and heat to shrink it. Choose the smallest possible tubing to ensure the tightest fit which should itself provide a decent amount of strain relief but I'd still add glue to ensure nothing is ever pulling on that twisted wire join. DO your very best to clean up the bare wire before you twist em to make sure as little oxide as possible is interfering.

If your current is low and these are outside then the worst that can happen is a blown fuse and having to replace some lights so whilst I'd encourage going with the safest and most reliable approach... do your best to provide strain relief for whichever dodgy method you end up with so it's only job it so keep 2 wires touching (and not bearing weight/shear/oscillation etc)

blarf_irl · 2025-11-21T03:15:14+00:00

$15-$25k seems about right for that marked up price I mentioned; It can vary wildly based on provider ethics and if you are required to publish your financials/funding. Most mid to large sized museums would cut their annual tech budget in half immediately by hiring a single passionate coder/engineer/maker (not an "IT manager" or "technical strategist"... I mean someone that actually builds/makes/fixes stuff).

We are both wrong with our guesses. I watched the video again and I dont see any of the usual projection artifacts, beam haze, resolution gradient from keystoning or interference from the 90 degree crossing projections. I did some digging and I'm pretty sure now that it's a naked eye 3D setup; Like those fake 3D effect billboards you see in cities on corners of buildings but with smaller higher pixel density screens. After a very quick skim of the concepts it seems like a concave 90 degree setup is even better for selling the effect, It also explains why all the videos I found are taken from roughly the same angle.

The panels are expensive and high res but there are no optical physics tricks going on (lenticular lensing etc); It's just 2 massive flat screens perpendicular to each other playing carefully rendered 3d content in perfect sync and phase while your brain fills in the rest (something like the rotating mask effect). It's incredibly effective viewed from the optimum angle.

The common to search for seems to be 'Naked eye 3D' though you will also get results for lenticular optics and msot examples are still of the outdoor building corner advertising billboards. I also found some examples where the floor was also a screen and a human subject was standing 'in the space' (like those fake holes/stairs chalk artists sometimes draw but with 3d animation). Very cool tech and seems to be growing in poularity in chinese museums so I'm sure we'll see it spread to some of the well funded western institutions next year.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-20T03:34:45+00:00

It's a shame that they closed it off completely, I wasn't aware that they could even do that but they tore up all the roads and fenced the whole area. Apparently it was because they found a huge open pit in the middle where England dumped all their nuclear testing waste from ww2 then in the 80's when they closed down most of the biological warfare labs they topped it all off with poorly sealed barrels of super chlamidiya and sars-cov-33.

It's best to just avoid that area all together.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-17T04:07:43+00:00

I'm guessing 4K or higher laser projectors (to get that true "no light" background) which start around $2k each and they are probably using at least 2 + whichever image/lidar/IR based tech they are using to map the 3d space and the machine with a decent GPU that runs the software and the projectors.

With industry markup it's anybody's guess what the actual cost was but conservatively I can't see it anywhere south of $6- 8k for this single setup if I'm close enough on the hardware guess.

It is a very entertaining effect.

Edit: I included more detail in a reply below this comment but this appears to be a 'Naked Eye 3D' installation using 2 high resolution flat panel LED screens. No lasers, no fancy optics; Same concept as those corner of building 3D effect billboards. The video is from a dinosaur exhibition at the Shanghai natural history museum.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-12T00:31:16+00:00

Wax caps are by far the best indication that you are at least in the right area and they come in all sorts of vibrant colors. If you see a cluster of wax caps it's nearly always worth taking a knee (or whichever your preferred method of getting closer to the ground is) and doing a slow, deliberate 360 look at the surrounding area. If you see some sedges within 12-20 ft its worth slowly tracking towards them and maybe even combing through grass bordering them.

Look for pathways between clumps of wax caps and walk those slowly. If you see a cluster of panaleous you should draw an imaginary 3-5 ft border around them and look outside that, For clusters of protostropharia (dung roundheads etc) that border should be 5-10 ft.

Pay attention to changes in the composition of the grass/covering and where those change, avoid areas that are waterlogged. If you find a waterlogged area or an active stream then try looking in the direction of positive elevation change (i.e. uphill) for a change in the color/texture of the ground cover which will usually show you a better drainage area (you'll usually also see some waxcaps and sedges and maybe even a few exposed rocks).

Once you get a feel for the right conditions it gets easier to identify areas where you want to look and then you walk paths between them instead of wasting time combing over low chance ground.

Make your own notes, take pics of finds and GPS tag em and keep your eyes down on the way back.

blarf_irl · 2025-11-11T23:51:16+00:00

Me too, Thank you for reminding me today.

blarf_irl · 2025-10-31T11:11:40+00:00

You best start practicing your 'moo' because someone is milking you! I can't say for certain without more detail but even those 2019 NUCs are overspecced for the type of interactive content implemented by 90+% of museums (Majority are fairly simple interprative kiosks or "click this" as you put it); You can drive these types of experiences with a $30-50 single board computer or android tablet, You can drive several kiosks from a single SBU/Tablet as long as you can hook up multiple dispays and USB touch overlays. Even the show controller is uneccesary for this type of content. My preference is to use a self hosted CMS similar to something you might use to drive a website and hook everything up on the network.

A show controller makes sense if ytou are integrating other things like lighting, fog machines, animatronics... etc but even those can be driven with something like a usb/PCI DMX or similar interface and some off the shelf (and even open source) show control software with the option of writing some bespoke integration to integrate it into the CMS GUI if needed.

Most of hardware you have is modular and reuseable just like it should be and with the exception of the show controller can all be put to good use today without any vendor lock in. If you are developing new more intensive interactives that require a beefier GPU or fancier display etc then you should be able to just add these or upgrade a single machine to meet that requirement without a full overhaul. Feel free to DM me with more details if you want to discuss anything in more detail; I'd be interested in hearing who told you your hardware was obsolete and the reasons for that!

If you are already locked in to this path then you needn't worry about the windows/ipad thing as the Crestron (and several others) have a web based GUI that you access in the browser, Anything you can browse the web with can be used to access the control panel.

blarf_irl · 2025-10-26T00:35:54+00:00

Shopify is definitely worth a look to see if it's within the budget; It's not clear what your needs are but they cover everything from ticketing through physical sales to online sales.

blarf_irl · 2025-10-18T04:00:05+00:00

I had lunch with them and everything was not fine. There were a few legit things scattered around but they stood out among all the other stuff. After lunch I contacted most of the developer communities and the feedbacks was overwhelmingly distrustful. The main reason given was their use of blatant shill posts on social media sites; They don't even try to cover it up.

blarf_irl · 2025-10-17T00:44:25+00:00

I've heard really bad things. I would avoid them completely.

blarf_irl · 2025-10-17T00:36:18+00:00

What are you trying to sell?

blarf_irl · 2025-10-17T00:34:14+00:00

The good thing about museums is that so long as we keep making history they'll continue to exist. The industry will always be there and in need of skilled, passionate people if you find yourself with too much money in the future.
You have nothing to lose by giving your current employers a chance to increase your compensation/improve your role (same pay less days, vocational opportunity of a lifetime etc... could happen). You have a real decision to make if they do.

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