Let's say right away that this was perhaps the most daring and unusual project for our company.
So, pour coffee, smoothie or a jager into a mug, and make yourself comfortable: there are a lot of geek-porn ahead, men with punchers and welding machines, beautiful girls and, in fact, the "Red October" piano itself, which, as befits a musical instrument Made in USSR, survived the fall and was not even upset (literally and figuratively). The same cannot be said about the capitalist laptop ...
It all started with an idea. "You never know when a piano will fall on you" - a phrase that has been played out more than once in literature and cinema and describes a hypothetical situation when some ridiculous event occurs, which, let's say, "makes adjustments" to the plans of the protagonist ...
Ok, where are we going to drop this piano?
Obviously, we will drop it on a computer or laptop, since we are talking about a situation when data is under threat, the owner of which did not take care of a digital copy in the cloud. Drawings, classified materials or a backup copy of the 1C: Accounting database - the loss of this data has already been played around, and more than once, both in films and in the nightmares of system administrators. So I wanted to find something fresh. And then we jumped at the idea that it would be an NFT GIF with a cat, the value of which is growing rapidly .
Well, the cherry on top of this story will be a love drama that will play out with your hypothetical friend (a simple shy programmer) and his girlfriend - a domineering, emotional, impulsive and dominant person, in whose treacherous paws a laptop with a gif fell. Long self-isolation due to the coronavirus has exposed problems in not very successful alliances and relationships between couples. All over the world, including in Russia , the number of divorces has increased, and this "issue" has risen to the first places in the rating of relevance. In addition, our calculation was that if not the participants in our quest, then their friends or acquaintances had some emotional experiences associated with parting with a loved one, and this story could cause a higher involvement.
So, the story has been invented, the main tools have been selected, there is little left to do, this whole plan is to be realized ...
▍Okey, google, how to hang a piano from the ceiling?
Yes, there are too few results for this request, so you have to do everything yourself.
First of all, we made a three-dimensional model of the entire scene in order to estimate the scale of the room, the height at which the piano will need to be hung, to calculate the acceleration, the thickness of the cables, and so on.
The visualization helped us understand how to place the cameras, how best to attach the cables, at what angle to turn the piano and where to place the victim (laptop).
▍What about the room?
The most difficult part of the project was finding a suitable room. First, we needed a stable internet connection. Secondly, a sturdy floor that will withstand the fall of a piano. Thirdly, the ceiling is at least 6 meters high, on which all this can be fixed.
Only construction hangars, industrial warehouses or abandoned workshops came to mind. Around we would build the scenery of the girl's apartment and fit into the legend tolerably. The three location managers were thoughtfully silent when they heard our budget and the above requirements. And when they heard about our plan, what exactly we are going to "drop" there, they politely ended the conversation and wished us success in our search.
And then we remembered about our friend, Alexei Gorov, the owner of the studio "Faraloft", in which we have already filmed several video projects, and, not really counting, called him. “Habr? Piano? A liquid nitrogen? Smash your laptop? Ahaha, I'm in business! " - Alexey answered, and we once again believed in the great power of Habr.
It turned out that he is a fan of Habr, he has his own mini-farm where the crypt is mined, and in general he does not mind that another no less legendary story happened in his legendary studio. And he has enough of these stories, believe me.
The studio is interesting because it is located in the former Gosplan garage , designed by the architect Melnikov.
Konstantin Melnikov himself wrote about his creation as follows: "One" eye "shifted from the center to the high volume of the administrative building with a narrow cut of the pipe - and I found the connection of the" formalistic "approach with the very essence of the beautiful world." In general, the ideal place for such an avant-garde art project, Konstantin Stepanovich would appreciate.
Ok, what about the piano?
It was not difficult to find a supported piano in Moscow. But when it came to making it in working order (we needed the central octave to be working), then all the owners were not very confident in their readings.
Finally, I found one in the Moscow region (Elektrostal), which fit perfectly into the budget.
- Is it in working order? We asked.
- Yes, they set it up two weeks ago, - said Valentina Ivanovna, its owner. - Be careful with him, please!
- What are you, Valentina Ivanovna! Let's blow dust off him! - we answered, trying to keep the noble intonations in our voice.
He arrived at our studio carefully packed from scratches:
As soon as we unpacked it and transported it to the studio, we realized that the piano fits perfectly into the interior:
The Krasny Oktyabr factory (formerly the Becker piano factory) produced excellent musical instruments.
A little from the history of the factory : “In 1947, a design bureau was created at the factory, and in the 1950s, the merits of the Red October tools were discussed in Europe. The winning of the Grand Prix by the Leningrad grand piano at the World Industrial Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 became a sensation, because the famous Blutner, Bechstein and Steinway did not consider him a competitor either. "And yes, the quality of the piano is very solid, after the fall, only the pedals broke, two legs and one of the keys flew off, but at the same time he was not even upset and it was possible to continue playing on it:
After the end of the project, the owner of the Faraloft studio , Aleksey Gorov, gave the grand piano for reconstruction, so our hero will still delight the studio visitors with his magnificent sound.
Ok, how do we hang it from the ceiling?
The first sketch of the scheme for attaching the piano to the ceiling looked like this:
Three years ago, the Habr team and I took part in the AFR regatta, and from there we got the idea to pull all the cables holding the piano into one console, which is called the "piano" on yachts (read more about that legendary regatta here .
The first sketch of the "piano" looked like this:
We welded this console from a metal profile, and next to the wall we fixed a winch, with which we raised the piano.
The ceiling suspension was made through a beam holding the roof. It is made of reinforced concrete, so the piano withstood it calmly:
cables were attached to a special supporting frame made of stainless steel screwed to the bottom of the piano:
Yes, according to calculations, the piano could hang on one of these cables. But our show lasts 5 days, so there are several cables:
With the rigging and the console, not everything worked out right away. I had to change the bolts from 8 mm to 10 mm, because during the tests they began to bend here and there. And on the cable connections, U-shaped clamps had to be added, because the double flat ties could not cope.
First test raising the piano:
Yes, the frame is empty, because many of us watched the movie " The Ghost Ship " and just in case moved away. Nobody wanted to be the hero of the Ghost Royale sequel.
To reduce the possible damage from flying cables (large glass windows in the studio), we fixed paint rollers at the ends:
It is difficult to say how much they helped; in the slow-motion video you can see how the cable with the roller quietly flies off towards the ceiling mount. But there was a possibility that he could well "whip" through the window, the twisted waves of the cable hint at this:
What if you can play the piano?
The whole project team was delighted with the idea of giving users the opportunity to play the piano.
Firstly, it is interactive, because looking at a hanging grand piano for a long time is not interesting, but playing it remotely will immediately increase engagement.
Secondly, this is a quest, and the piano can become one of the key elements. It will be possible to play the desired melody and gain access to one of the keys. Read about the 10th bonus key in our walkthrough instructions .
At the same time, we started thinking about how to organize a piano game, and put together a prototype device based on the Arduino Nano and Raspberry Pi on the knee. In the first version, we lit up the necessary bulbs of the addressable LED strip.
In the final version, we added an expansion board with a relay and two rows of solenoids on the plywood:
The device is assembled and ready to meet the grand piano:
In the final version, it looked like this:
Even though the idea was to 3D print the case at first, we didn't hide the insides. First, to leave visible the LEDs, by which it will be clear to us whether the main components of the device are working or not. And secondly, this is the same project for Habr, geek porn and a little cyberpunk:
On the site we placed a keyboard on which we drew numbers and notes, which boldly hinted that we had encrypted something there :
Obviously, there will be a lot of people who want to play their melody (about 2100 melodies were played on the piano for the entire project), so we implemented a queue mechanism via a Telegram bot. The participant played the melody, it was recorded and transmitted by the bot via the API to the Raspberry Pi. The user immediately after that received the first notification with a forecast of the playback time, and then, about 20 seconds before the recording was played, an invitation to watch this moment "live" through the broadcast on the site:
The participant followed the link and listened to how his melody was played in some distant "Moscow apartment":
By the way, the piano played incessantly, we had to record several takes for this video in order to find a pause:
▍What about nitrogen?
Actually, why was nitrogen needed at all? Well, first of all, it's beautiful. And secondly, modern HDDs are made quite durable and can easily survive such a minor nuisance as a piano falling. Therefore, we decided to approach the issue of destroying an NFT with a cat thoroughly and add liquid nitrogen to the plot. To be sure.
In order to prevent liquid nitrogen from spilling anywhere, we bought a regular shower tray and welded a drain hole on it:
A rubber stopper or sealant could break down pretty quickly under nitrogen action, so “Just welding! Only hardcore! "
Liquid nitrogen came to us in an ordinary gazelle inside which was located such a unit:
Yes, apparently, one of the participants in "House 2" was frozen in order to revive in 2035 and give the show a new breath:
The process of pouring liquid nitrogen into a Dewar vessel:
At the appointed hour, we, as promised, filled the laptop with liquid nitrogen:
Freeze frame a few milliseconds before meeting the piano. It can be seen that the laptop panel swelled up from the sharp cooling and the keyboard was covered with frost:
But what happened to the laptop after freezing and meeting with a 500-kilogram grand piano:
We subsequently pulled out the disk, it really was intact, but the data on it was no longer readable, apparently, the sharp hypothermia still violated the integrity of the printed circuit board or microcircuits. Well, shtosh, not the cheapest way to get rid of data. But very entertaining!
▍Results of the project and some statistics:
▍ :
