How a major museum runs on Python

Sat September 05, 04:35 PM–05:00 PM • Back to program
Start time 16:35
End time 17:00
Countdown link Open timer

Discussion of COVID impacts on museums and projects

We built a system for deploying, managing and monitoring hundreds of Internet-of-Things devices in a museum; let us show you why & how.

ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is the most visited museum of the moving image in the world. In 2019 we closed our doors, to reshape our Federation Square building in order to become more public-facing, and to house a major new permanent exhibition, The Story of the Moving Image.

As you might imagine, we have a lot of moving image to show, and a lot of fascinating objects to tell people about, all of which can be overwhelming to some audiences. That's why we designed and built a system called The Lens. Every visitor to the museum can pick up a Lens, which they use to collect objects and media to watch and explore in their own time. The Lens depends on a network of hundreds of Raspberry Pi devices to display media and interact with visitors, all running Opensourced Python code. All these devices need to be robust and maintainable in order to survive the 10-year lifespan of the exhibition.

In this talk, we'll give you a tour of the technology at ACMI, including our Internet-of-Things fleet and management tools, and XOS, the eXperience Operating System, which provides content and configuration to the devices.

Greg Turner Greg: he/him/them/they, Ali: she/her,

Greg is a creative technology leader, strategist and maker who has been working with Python since 2007. As Chief Technology Officer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and CEO at the Interaction Consortium, Greg is on a quest to bring vision, ambition and generosity to diverse teams practising at the forefronts of technology and culture.

Ali Haberfield She/her

is a creative technologist at ACMI using python, javascript and a stack of yaml files to bring some pretty amazing stuff to life.

Simon Loffler He/him, xe/xem.

Enjoys equality, software, film, electronics & space. Works for ACMI & New Internationalist magazine. Founding member of MOD. and Hackerspace Adelaide.