Do you remember fire art?
We do, and we miss it. Don’t get us wrong -- a lot of our favorite Burning Man projects in the last few years have been of the “individually addressable LED” variety. But it’s time to go back to our roots – let’s light some stuff on fire!
The False Profit Labs BlimpCorps presents:
BATTLE BLIMPS
Battle Blimps is an interactive fire installation in which the denizens of Burning Man are invited to pilot miniature Hindenburgs in a battle royale -- like the infamous Black Rock City Thunderdome, but for tiny, remote-controlled, hydrogen-filled blimps. Every round of blimp combat will include four red-hot-poker-tipped zeppelins, each of which will attempt to ram the others, puncture their gas envelopes, and cause them to crash to the ground in fiery balls of doom. Oh, the humanity!
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How not to fly your Battle Blimp...
Let’s have some fun.
At False Profit Labs, we believe in fun. The kind of fun that ends in flames and glory.
Battle Blimps is an interactive game that anyone can play. Our zeppelins are light and maneuverable, and unlike radio-controlled airplanes or helicopters they are inherently stable -- if you let go of the controls they’ll just float calmly in mid-air, and they even bounce off obstacles instead of crashing to the ground. To make the controls immediately familiar and accessible to a wide audience, we’ve chosen to use off-the-shelf Xbox controllers. So far we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback on the ease of use and flight performance of the blimps from kids and adults alike -- you grab the controls and you’re zipping around in seconds!
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Each action-packed round of blimp combat will be an event unto itself. Four lucky individuals will step into the False Profit Aerodrome to try their hand as pilots, seeking glory, fiery carnage, and victory. Combatants will be given 10 minutes to annihilate their rivals. Fierce alliances and devastating betrayals are inevitable! Some will win; more will lose!
What we’re building to create this experience
Airframes and Gas Envelopes: Each blimp is constructed on a three-foot-long airframe on which the brain, the motors, and all of the other machinery are mounted. Within the skeleton of the airframe is nestled the gas envelope, a custom-made bioplastic balloon that is designed to safely and gloriously burn as the blimp plummets to its doom.
Radio control: The brain of each blimp is a tiny bluetooth-enabled Arduino that communicates with our central station, which is hooked up to the pilot’s controllers and the monitoring panel that we use to keep track of the blimps.
Ignition system: Finally, each blimp is tipped with an ignition system that uses an array of needles to tear the gas envelope open, and a small nichrome wire coil (the same metal that glows red hot in your toaster) to ignite the escaping hydrogen.
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Anatomy of a Battle Blimp
The False Profit Aerodrome: Each ultralight Battle Blimp weighs around 23 grams. To keep them from being carried off by wind (and to keep participants and observers safe), we’re building an arena worthy of the spectacle: the False Profit Aerodrome. Crowds will watch from an observation area around the perimeter, separated from a central arena by a wire screen. Pilots will battle from atop an elevated control tower, immersed in a three-dimensional dogfight that unfolds both above and below their vantage point.
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We think this set up will enable a truly unique experience. But to bring this experience to the Playa, we need your help...
Where will your contribution go?
Your financial contribution will go entirely towards the cost of creating the Battle Blimps project and bringing it to Burning Man. The direct costs of this project are divided into two big areas: the Battle Blimps themselves and the False Profit Aerodrome; in addition, we need to tackle a number of indirect costs.
For the Battle Blimps themselves, we estimate the costs at roughly $3,500; of this, about $2,800 is budgeted for consumables (balloons, hydrogen, spares of parts that are expected to be damaged or destroyed by the flaming crashes each round), and the rest will go towards parts of the blimps that should survive for many rounds (the electronics, motors, batteries, airframes, and controllers).
We are budgeting $6,700 for the Aerodrome, which goes toward the structure itself (domes: more expensive than we thought), a fire-resistant dome cover, fire safety gear, the screen around the play area, lighting, the control tower, and odds and ends.
Finally, there are some indirect costs. First, transportation will cost about $1,500. Contributor perks come in at about another $500. That brings us to $12,300, but we’ve run enough big-budget projects to know that no matter how carefully you budget, you’re almost surely forgetting something, so it’s our practice to add about 6% for emergencies, which is another $700. Last but not least, Indiegogo’s cut is about $1,100, which brings us to $14,100.
Who are we?
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Since 2003, False Profit Labs has delivered on the promise of Better Art Through Science, from exploding hydrogen soap bubbles to heartbeat controlled flame effects to multi-colored fire plumes to carbon fiber art. We are art engineers who fabricate, machine, weld, program, and construct larger-than-life art installations designed to create inspiring experiences for observers and participants.
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False Profit Labs has exhibited interactive fire sculptures at Burning Man, NASA Ames, the Fire Arts Festival, Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, Maker Faire, and many other events around the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and beyond, receiving over 15 art grants from a wide range of commercial and non-commercial supporters. Our artistic focus has been interactivity and direct audience control of fire. Seemingly dangerous exploding things always fascinate, but we have strived to take that fascination to a deeper level -- “From Wow To How.”
Get involved!
We would really love to have you involved in this project, and there are a number of ways to jump in. If you can contribute financially, any amount it is hugely appreciated. You can also help spread the word! Please share the link to our campaign ( http://igg.me/at/battleblimps ), join our facebook group, and send people mail by e- and snail!
If you want to take your involvement to the next level, drop us a line about volunteering. We’re looking for collaborators to join the project, both before Burning Man and on the Playa. This project has a lot of elements -- electronics, 3d design, fabrication, construction, and arts-and-crafts-type stuff -- so there are a lot of fun things to learn and do. And we’re looking for volunteers to help us staff the project at Burning Man, which is a spectacular way to spend an evening or two on the Playa. If any of this appeals to you, get in touch on our facebook group!
We ♥ open source
The Battle Blimp hardware is built on top of Arduino (RFduino to be more specific). Our control station is built with Python and currently runs on Linux. If you want to build a blimp of your own, you can check out our github repository to see our code. We’ll be publishing our final PCB designs and a complete bill of materials after Burning Man.
Risk and challenges
At this point, we have fully-operational blimps and we have successfully achieved blimp combustion, so the core of the project works today. However, we are planning around a few known risks. There’s almost no chance that Battle Blimps won’t be running in some capacity. And we will bring Battle Blimps to other forums closer to home after Burning Man. But some of these risks could force us to run battles at Burning Man without fire (or to run fewer matches).
Scaling up balloon production: We need to produce a lot of safely-combustible bioplastic gas envelopes. Several hundred, maybe a thousand or more. We have a couple dozen for testing, but producing our high target number by Burning Man may be a challenge. If we’re short, we’ll eventually have to switch to off-the-shelf balloons, which means no fire.
Ignition Problems: We know our ignition system works, but it doesn’t yet work as reliably as we want. This isn’t a show-stopper, but it might be a little irritating if a direct hit on another blimp doesn’t result in a well-deserved fiery demise.
Fire Inspection: We have submitted a fire safety application and are in contact with the Burning Fire Art Safety Team, and so far we’ve received positive feedback, but it’s always possible that the fire component of this project will not be approved.
The False Profit Aerodrome: This is the biggest set of all-or-nothing capital investments. We have to wait to see how this campaign is going before we procure the dome and aerodrome equipment. With less than a month before Burning Man, the risk is that we won’t be able to buy a dome and produce the other bits of the Aerodrome in the time available to us (despite having a few dome vendors lined up).
Burning Man: Burning Man eats art projects. It just does. Things that work flawlessly off the playa mysteriously give up the ghost once they land in the desert. Radios work less well than expected, heat/cold/dust causes electronics to fail, hippies cause project teams to fall into despair… anything can happen out there.
BlimpCorps Perks
We have some truly unique perks for everyone supporting Battle Blimps. Every dollar helps! Really: thanks for contributing in any amount, and for sharing this project with your friends.
For those contributing $20 or higher, we’ll send you one of our limited edition BlimpCorps Battle Blimps Safety Stickers, which highlight the hazards of incorrect Battle Blimp usage:
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Flaming blimps: Not recommended for face
For those contributing $60, we’ll send you the sticker, plus a BlimpCorps Battle Blimps tank top or tee-shirt, and at $190, we'll add the Battle Blimps hoodie.
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Tee, tank top, and hoodie/jacket.
Note that we'll be refining these designs before shipping.
For a really unique perk, check out the Battle Blimps souvenir PCBs. At $110, you get a sticker, t-shirt/tank top, and the awesome souvenir board below. For the ambitious, this board will actually be production hardware that (with some sweat and tears) you could turn into your very own Battle Blimp. (Note that these are offered without warranty or support, but see main text for our open source commitment.)
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Note: We'll be refining the board design as well before shipping.
But there’s more than just merch. We’re committed to delivering a high-quality blimp combat experience, and we want to ensure that you, our core community of backers, get to be involved in that experience. We have a few perks designed to make sure that people who have helped make this project a reality (and their friends and campmates) will get to participate in experience. Get your spot in front of the line to be a pilot, grab the mic to announce your very own Blimp Battle, or bring home an actual Battle Blimp. See the full list in the sidebar!
(Note that some of these participation perks are meant to be experienced at Burning Man 2015, but we will attempt to honor them at other events at which the Battle Blimps are present.)
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