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| FocalPoint LCD panel
Ansae Ltd is pleased to announce the launch of FocalPoint, a customisable, durable and contemporary LCD monitor. It has been designed to enhance exhibits in museums, attractions and visitor centres where visual appearance is of particular importance.
FocalPoint offers a number of advantages: it is available in a wide range of finishes (eg marble, sand, wood and aluminium) enabling the display to fit perfectly with the overall theme and content of its surroundings. Exhibit designers simply specify their requirements and the LCD is made in the chosen material, to the precise size and with wall, ceiling or floor mounting options. The units are extremely durable, scratch resistant and offer a high level of security.
Ansae Ltd. specialises in the development of innovative software, exciting exhibit design and the development of creative interactives. MD Jeff Graham says, “As the demands of visitors to museums and visitor centres become more sophisticated, so designers are facing greater challenges to stay ‘one step ahead’. Ansae is able to help by providing the technical wizardry that stimulates the senses.“
FocalPoint follows the highly successful Puppeteer which has been used successfully in a wide range of exhibits, including a number in the Science Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Dartmoor National Park Visitor Centre.
More details on the Products page.
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| Classroom of the Future
For the past 3 years, Ansae Ltd has been working closely with the Science Museum on a project called ‘Classroom of the Future’. Funded by the Department for Education and Skills, the project’s aim is to look at new ways of helping children achieve more by using developing technologies to create stimulating and innovative learning environments. The project challenges current thinking on where education ends and play begins, and the impact of building design within education.
Ansae’s involvement has been in the researching, construction and testing of interactive games with children across three age ranges, in three separate schools in Bedfordshire. The company’s ‘Puppeteer’, a low energy yet powerful computer system, has been included within three of the playground games, providing the computing control, sound, and intelligence behind them.
The Science Museum’s approach was to use their skills as educators and designers to change the playground from a dull, featureless and boring expanse to a place that would continue to provide learning, provoke team work and stimulate young minds outside the classroom. They also looked at renewable energy sources, so all the equipment is powered by wind and solar energy.
The resultant ‘Classroom of the Future’ challenges the traditional relationships between the indoor and outdoor learning environment and the perceived barriers between play and lesson time.
On Thursday 12 June the Rt. Hon. David Miliband MP, Minister for School Standards unveiled the ‘Classroom of the Future’ in Bedfordshire. Representatives of Ansae were invited to attend as a principal contractor.
For further details of the project, see our Solutions page, by clicking on this link, which has background information and some photographs of the finished project.
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| DSP board
Ansae has developed an additional board for Puppeteer, which will allow recording and playback of sounds. The initial application records children's voices and plays them back. Special effects can be added, such as pitch shift, which makes the voice sound like Donald Duck, and echo effects, which make the voice sound like a Dalek. More details on the Products page.
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| Weather station
Ansae's Puppeteer was used to control and read data from a weather station and display the information on an internal display panel. This is installed at the Dartmoor Visitors Centre.
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| FPGA programming
Ansae's Puppeteer has been chosen by the University of West of England as the basis for a new course at the University. This will teach computer students in the wonders of programmable hardware, both FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device.
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| Wind chimes
Ansae is actively involved in a project to produce an electronic wind chime, for use in public spaces. Wind chimes provide musical tones from random input (the wind), so an electronic wind chime can use different sources of random input. We have chosen to use a visual system, which picks out movement and colour to provide the random input of the wind and its strength. The output can be any special effect; for now, we have chosen to use wind chime sounds, which change each day. One day it can be a bamboo sound; another steel tubes; and another wooden tubes.
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| Voice recognition and control
Ansae has extended the Puppeteer system and added the means to control the device by voice recognition. Spoken commands are recognised from a vocabulary of up to 50 words; the unit responds with voice prompts or error messages and controls the output devices according to instruction. For further details, refer to the Products page.
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| Dichroic lamp control
In response to a customer's request, Ansae has designed an add-on item for the Puppeteer system. This controls a 20W or 50W dichroic lamp from full off to full on, in a series of steps. It is driven under program control by Puppeteer. For further details, refer to the Products page.
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| Classroom of the Future
On the 5th February 2001, the DfEE announced a scheme to boost science in the classroom as part of a £10 million Classroom of the Future pilot scheme.
Jacqui Smith said:
“As we enter the new Millennium, it is time to challenge current thinking on educational building design. We need to look at new ways of helping children to achieve more through developing technologies and create learning environments that are truly stimulating. Classroom of the Future will help deliver this through the building and evaluation of cutting edge examples of the types of classrooms needed for the 21st century.
“This is an exciting and worthwhile challenge that has resulted in an impressive response from local authorities across the country - our selection panel had a difficult task in drawing up a shortlist. Some excellent ideas have been put forward to improve the delivery of education as we move into the 21st century. These pilots will be instrumental in shaping our classrooms of the future.”
Local authorities were invited to put forward their ideas following the publication of a discussion paper on the Classroom of the Future last June. The pilots needed to embrace developments in education such as longer working days and the need for better, organised individual and group work as well as developing technologies such as the increase in internet use. Other objectives were to enable wider community use of facilities and experiment with design. The pilot projects are expected to run in both primary and secondary schools.
Bedfordshire will develop three pilots in partnership with the Science Museum. The proposals combine innovative approaches to motivational learning with applications of new technologies, including renewable energy sources, and new uses of ICT. Examples are given of interactive learning experiences, using walls, ceilings and floors - but each project is different, being tailored to the age ranges for lower, middle and upper schools. Flexibility is emphasised. Projects will be located in areas of significant urban and rural deprivation, with potential for replication on a much wider scale.
As part of this overall project, Ansae is working with the Science Museum, to apply Puppeteer.
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| Gressenhall Museum
As part of the redevelopment of the Norfolk Rural Life Museum, Ansae completed the installation of a number of systems, in conjunction with Bremner & Orr Design Consultants. Further details of this are given in the case study.
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| Puppeteer system expands
Ansae Ltd has extended the Puppeteer system by adding a number of accessories, to further enhance the system. The first is a Power Distribution module. When building a complex hardware system, with relays and lamps, all of which require external power, power distribution is a problem. Puppeteer itself needs 12V DC. We have designed a simple Distribution Module to solve this problem.
Ansae has also developed a non-contact switch, using infrared. This is designed as the ultimate vandal-proof switch because there are no accessible physical components - the switch can be mounted behind a panel, with only a hole required. Presence of a hand or finger is enough to activate the switch.
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