How a major museum runs on Linux
Pia Andrews Conservatory | Sat 23 Jan 2:55 p.m.–3:10 p.m.
Presented by
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Simon Loffler
@sighmon
https://sighmon.com
sighmon is a creative technologist at ACMI, software developer at New Internationalist, and enjoys working with environment sensors and solar power. He helped (re)start Hackerspace Adelaide, co-founded MOD. museum of discovery, and loves using and contributing to open source software projects.
Simon Loffler
@sighmon
https://sighmon.com
Abstract
ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is the most visited museum of the moving image in the world. In 2019 we closed our doors, to reshape our Federation Square building in order to become more public-facing, and to house a major new permanent exhibition, The Story of the Moving Image.
As you might imagine, we have a lot of moving image to show, and a lot of fascinating objects to tell people about, all of which can be overwhelming to some audiences. That's why we designed and built a system called The Lens. Every visitor to the museum can pick up a Lens, which they use to collect objects and media to watch and explore in their own time. The Lens depends on a network of hundreds of Raspberry Pi devices to display media and interact with visitors, all running Python on Linux. All these devices need to be robust and maintainable in order to survive the 10-year lifespan of the exhibition.
In this talk, I'll give you a tour of the technology at ACMI, including our Internet-of-Things fleet and management tools, why Linux has been such a great choice for all of our devices, and XOS, the eXperience Operating System, which provides content and configuration to the devices.
ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is the most visited museum of the moving image in the world. In 2019 we closed our doors, to reshape our Federation Square building in order to become more public-facing, and to house a major new permanent exhibition, The Story of the Moving Image. As you might imagine, we have a lot of moving image to show, and a lot of fascinating objects to tell people about, all of which can be overwhelming to some audiences. That's why we designed and built a system called The Lens. Every visitor to the museum can pick up a Lens, which they use to collect objects and media to watch and explore in their own time. The Lens depends on a network of hundreds of Raspberry Pi devices to display media and interact with visitors, all running Python on Linux. All these devices need to be robust and maintainable in order to survive the 10-year lifespan of the exhibition. In this talk, I'll give you a tour of the technology at ACMI, including our Internet-of-Things fleet and management tools, why Linux has been such a great choice for all of our devices, and XOS, the eXperience Operating System, which provides content and configuration to the devices.