End Point at the Utah Open Source Conference
By Josh Ausborne
May 5, 2012
End Point had a table at the Utah Open Source Conference at Utah Valley University this week. We implemented a “mini Liquid Galaxy” system for the event, and it was a big hit. Most of the other sponsors were offering services or recruiting, but End Point offered a physical item which people could touch and engage with. This allowed us to present our product and services to people, as well as make contact with people who may be interested in joining our team.
Numerous people were really excited about the Liquid Galaxy. The most common thing that people did first when they started using it was to look for their own homes, but they quickly moved onto other areas that contained more 3D building content. They asked questions about the practical application of the system, as well how well it would play games. Multiple other people asked about the ability to build video walls with the system. One of the biggest things that people found interesting about the hardware was the 3D mouse from 3Dconnexion. It took some visitors a while to get the hang of it, but others picked it up quickly and found themselves really liking the way it interacts.
The mini LG consisted of a headless head node, three display nodes powering five 24″ inch HP monitors, and one HP touch screen being used as a control panel. The head node was a Dell Inspiron 531s with a 2.8GHz AMD Athlon, 4GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The display nodes are Puget Systems-built with 2.6GHz i5 processors, 8GB of RAM, 80GB SSDs, and NVIDIA GeForce 210 video cards.
One of the things that we had to do differently with this system, as opposed to our normal installs, was to flatten out the semicircle of displays. The HP displays’ viewing angle wasn’t very wide, and was preventing people from being able to view the system unless they were right up near the displays. By flattening it out, more people were able to view the system and have their interest captured.
One thing that we also noticed during the event is that a Liquid Galaxy system performs very well when it has 60 Mbps of bandwidth available to it.
There was even a kid who found a way to keep himself entertained with the Liquid Galaxy. He found his house and started using the LG to “jump” on the trampoline in his backyard.
Comments