Ford Smart Mobility Lab

Eight sixty-five inch networked 4K OLED displays combined to form a giant, synchronized, interactive display wall.

The Ford Smart Mobility project aims to solve mobility problems around the world. The scope is wide and the experiments are many. Ford hosts annual contests seeking innovative ways to address and raise awareness around mobility issues. The Smart Mobility Lab was created to present these stories and educate internal Ford team members, potential partners and the press.

Working the GTB design team, we created a custom, extendable presentation and story telling system. Sefi built a Chromeapp that handled content management, presentation, and synchronization. My role to connect the Chromeapp with the displays and the physical world.

Our team was responsible for researching and sourcing all components. Using off-the-shelf materials and universally available software platform (HTML), the system was designed to be easily replicated anywhere in the world and presentations to be synced over the internet.

Eight 4k displays delivered an insane amount of pixels. The content was uploaded at full resolution and displayed at 34560x7680! Sefi did an amazing job using webgl and canvas APIs with CSS3 transitions and more to pull it off smoothly and keep the displays in sync.

We built and configured the entire system in the office then installed everything on-site at Ford’s Research and Innovation Center.

Role

  • Created a tablet based web app “room controller”
  • Wrote controller app to synchronize displays running custom Chromeapp on eight PCs on a local network
  • Sourced materials and worked with finance teams
  • Worked with clients discussing strategy, features and training
  • Created an “room controller” api to power the displays and launch the app
  • Built an Arduino based controller that emits IR pattern for each display’s power
  • Designed and created custom PCB arduino shield
  • Extendable API for future addition of sensors, remote data streams and more
  • Documented the custom CMS app using Hugo SSG and served the documentation locally
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