NIKE Speed track
A 120-camera rig of networked Canon DSLRs capturing a ‘bullet-time’ effect of users dribbling a ball and shooting on goal.
Lead Hardware, Software, Project Management
ROLE
RaspberryPi, NodeJS, Adobe AE, Custom EE
TECH
Incredible Machines, Atomic, Nike
TEAM
2014
YEAR
As part of the #RiskEverything campaign leading up to the 2014 World Cup, Nike conceived of the Hall of Phenomenal, a 6-day experiential marketing event in NYC. We (Incredible Machines), developed an installation that involved guests dribbling a ball down a constructed green, shooting on goal, while a sensor-activated rig of 120 networked DSLR cameras captured a “bullet-time” effect of their performance.
Our installation addressed three of Nike’s goals with the Hall of Phenomenal experience: allowing guests to try on their new shoes that season (guests were fitted before participating), creating an engaging participatory experience for guests, and generating unique visual assets that were posted to socials.
Because we not only needed to trigger captures with extreme precision ( <5ms latency ), but also download the images locally in order to generate the composited video, we developed a networked solution with custom RaspberryPi “backpacks” with analog actuators, mounted on each camera.
I designed a PCB to interface with the RPi's GPIO pinouts which triggered and autofocused the DSLR via it's shutter port, read an analog input from 3rd party laser/motion sensors, and provided LED status feedback. Each RPi was running a Node app listening for networked UDP commands, and transferring image data downloaded from it's camera after each capture.
Immediately after the set of 120 images are captured, they’re sent to an automated image processing workflow, overlaid with the event branding, and then sent to the guest via their registered email.
