Idea #17 — Ventspils, Latvia “Kurzeme Tech Demo-center”
Within Latvia covid-19 pandemic has subsided and museums and other family friendly places has re-opened once again. During covid-19 crisis we moved to Northern costal city Ventspils (Latvia https://goo.gl/maps/LT29v1s7n3bxigDR6). Locals know that this city is famous for large number of children friendly attractions. This time we wen to “Kurzeme Tech Demo-center” (https://www.kurzemesdemocentrs.lv/en/) that essentially is an EU funded exposition about climate change, but it has a lot of kid friendly digital and custom made hardware attractions. Also since borders between Baltic States has been opened Ventspils is packed with tourists from Lithuania as usual holiday destinations around the globe are closed now. They are seen in large numbers every year in Ventspils, but this year brings even more tourists from neighboring countries where covid-19 has been under control for a while now.
Demo-center is open from 10am — 6pm every day except Mondays and Tuesdays.
Adults and children from 6 years ticket: 3.5 EUR
Family ticket for 5 persons: 12 EUR
Under 6 year old for free
In my opinion price is too steep for what they have there, but if you are on holidays or from Norway it might be ok.
Within the museum there is a place to leave coats and bags, but no lockers.
Location is friendly to baby carriages as the whole exposition is on a single level with only 2 rooms.
Undoubtedly the main attraction is a Microsoft Kinect V1 + projection + sandbox table/simulation.
It simulates terrain colours depending on the elevation of the sand and simulates flowing water in deeper parts of the sandbox. Using your hands you can dig mountains, rivers and seas. Even more, by placing your hand above the sandbox you can emulate rain. Also by turning a dial you can emulate different water levels of the whole sandbox.
They also placed toy houses that children can place on the sand. The only problem with the attraction is that sandbox is very high and there is no place for children to step up, so parents need to hold them to reach the sand.
I am considering building similar contraption at home for my kids as I have one spare Kinect V2 laying around. This could be my next yellowrobot.xyz project:
Some weight lifting attractions give out audible sounds of all sorts of carbon-producing machines like heavy “bad” aeroplanes and easy to lift “good” electric cars.
Another fun activity that they have there is a digital rocket launchpad where visitors can launch satellites around the earth projected on the wall for all to see. A child can set angles of an orbit, location of the launch, type of the rocket (SpaceX Falcon 9 of course) and name of a satellite.
Another highlight of the demo-centre is a Leap Motion + projector-based driving game where you can steer invisible wheel and use an invisible clutch handle. The game itself is not very well designed, but nonetheless, it’s an entertaining experience. The only caveat again is that children cannot reach the tabletop and there is nowhere to step up.
Some years ago using the same sensor + Oculus Rift I built a system where you can play pong with a real racket, but with fake balls.
And also we built a system that enabled people to design houses in virtual reality using their finger, 3D print them and place in the scaled model of a city. It was back in 2018 for Tallinn Architecture Biennale
It must be noted that even though you pay a considerable amount of money for tickets a couple of expositions were broken and unusable. I would expect everything to be in working condition for that price.
Finally, to end on a positive note there is a special exhibition of hardware products from startups that have been somehow linked with the city of Ventspils.
I found some of the startups of our friends like AirDog drone that recently got acquired Alarm.com (https://labsoflatvia.com/en/news/airodg-acquired)
and CatchBox — the original throwable microphone for events (https://catchbox.com).
Another notable mention is HansaMatrix (http://www.hansamatrix.com) that has one of the offices near the demo-centre. They have helped a lot of local startups to create all sorts of hardware prototypes.
If you want me to translate to English some of my previous posts let me know in comments.
