The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival is only days away and we’re pulling 2pir out of our shop space at NIMBY to bring it out to the new fire arts arena in Oakland. You’ll be able to jump up on the platform and control huge flame effects with just a wave of your hand. Safe and fun for kids of all ages! The festivities kick off on Wednesday night (July 15th) and run through Saturday the 19th. Get your tickets now before they’re sold out and plan to arrive early to avoid the lines.

As usual, we’ve been working on improving 2pir. A while back Ian and Nicole came up with the idea of taking it out to the playa to run for the 4th of July, which provided an excellent opportunity to fix up some lingering issues. There was some last minute scrambling to get things in working order, but we managed to haul it out to the Black Rock Desert. On Friday, we set everything up and started to test, but the new ignition system wasn’t working as expected. We downgraded to super-janky igniters (i.e. wicks soaked in lamp oil.) They weren’t nearly as pretty as the nichrome wire, but they worked for a couple of hours as we played late into the night. Saturday was much more successful. We reverted to a refined version of our igniters from the Maker Faire, which ended up being the best ignition system so far for 2pir. We invited several people to spin fire, flags, or swing whatever they wanted around as we pumped music out of our sound system. Those who chose to jump on the platform and perform had a blast, and were quite entertaining for everyone standing around the perimeter.

Evan took some great pictures
Ed got a couple of videos

2pir was a hit at Maker Faire. We had person after person asking us when we were going to start running all day long. And had crowds gathering off and on all night long. We really started running around 8pm and our 500lbs of propane lasted just the right amount of time until shutdown at 10pm. We were able to give several people a chance on the platform and enjoyed how everyone interacted with the sensors and fire in their own way. Some highlights of the evening? The mother who swung her kid around, Jake swinging Kai (and everyone else) around, the girl with the umbrella and boots, and of course tons of kids including one with an appropriate shirt.

That’s not to say we weren’t without the normal hiccups that go along with every performance. Igniter issues, wind, and what may be a dead sensor caused some delays. If you were one of the ones that sat and waited for us to sort things out, thank you for sticking it out!

For those keeping track of how 2pir ran (since it’s a growing and changing piece), this time we ran with only the high flame effects, brand new (awesome) sensors, a brand new Soekris board running our perl script on Debian, a retro-fitted lowered platform, our brand new water pump, and of course lots of the good old propane.

If you missed us at Maker Faire, we’re sorry. It only made sense to have us run Saturday evening. But don’t worry, we’re hoping that Interpretive Arson will be back next year to blow your minds. A huge thanks to Maker Faire for being one of the easiest events to work with and giving us the opportunity to be a part of it.

A couple different blogs/newsites/etc mentioned 2pir:
Wired
c|net
geek gestalt

And of course lots of pictures and videos:
Daniel Garcia (photos)
Ed Hunsinger (photos & video)

If you have pictures, videos, or a link to an article about 2pir, please let us know so we can add it to the list.