Rain Drums

Cedar River Watershed
Visitor Education Center


Technical Design,
Fabrication and Installation
for Artist Dan Corson
and
Seattle Office of Arts
and Cultural Affairs




People come from all parts
to experience the Rain Drum Courtyard.



The system deals with
freezing weather, high winds,
soil, water and electricity,
a combination that tests the
robustness of the design.




Two-sided PCB designed with Eagle Printed Circuit Board Design software.




High-side switches keep the solenoid valves at zero potential unless activated, minimizing corrosion. A remote temperature sensor signals the water system to winterize: shut down and drain when temperature is near freezing. A power outage signals a switch to battery power, initiates winterization sequence, then power off.




See the code that runs the controller at Github




User interface running on Windows. The software manages the times of operation, the playlists, and turns MIDI files into a serial data stream sent to the controller.