Testing the machine

printer with test predictions printing and the The Prediction Machine logo

Last week we moved forward with testing and building the machine… The printer is working and is amazingly robust, it is a proper kiosk printer like the ones you get in parking ticket machines (put to a good use for once i’d like to think), it is a thermal printer so doesn’t need ink but i have not managed to get recycled card for it as yet – this is something i will be looking into for next year and when the machine goes on tour.

We tested printing out predictions based on the data ranges coming from the weather station – you can’ t really tell from the print out yet but the text at the top responded to the warm dry weather in Loughborough coming live from the weather station. We also tested the basic functions including the lights for the sign, the hand crank powering the screen and the voltage levels from the crank that tells the machine when to print (after 10 secs of full voltage). We tested the Timestreams coming from the system being developed at Horizon / Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham that enables us to transform and mediate all the weather and climate data used by the machine. It all worked!

the oak machine in it's basic form (before any finishing is put on) and missing the sign at the top

Matt Little setting up the hand crank

lights for the sign controlled by temperature data