Spring - 2004

Mystus News
Fall - 2005

New Exhibits

Hockey Heritage North

Our recent work for the Hockey Heritage North museum comprised of touch activated audio playback, a realistic and automated skate sharpening demonstration, a video capture station simulating a live interview, and two computer kiosks for up to date content delivery. Of particular interest was the "Interview The Stars" exhibit. The visitor is invited to sit in the broadcasters chair. With staff prompting they read the questions from cards. Their readings are recorded and automatically mixed in with the previously recorded player responses. At the end they, and the gathered audience, view back the entire sequence of questions and responses. The full interview is available to be burned on a Dvd and taken home as a souvenir of their visit.
Mystus provided all the active components for the interactives. We integrated these components with the physical housings and coordinated the installation and fine tuning on site.
The software requirement for these exhibits was quite complex. We drew upon our previous experience in video capture (Guelph Museum) and web connection (HBC Gallery, Montreal). The mechanical skate sharpening exhibit required our 'no surprises' prototyping method.
Kirkland Lake is a remote town. The exhibits were developed with particular attention to maintainability in a remote location. A discovered issue was the extreme static discharge problem in the dry indoor air of the northern winter. This problem was solved using a combination of grounding, anti static carpet spray and anti static mats.

Interactive Map at the North Bay Museum

Mystus has created and integrated the electronic components for an interactive map to be displayed at the Discovery North Bay museum in North Bay, Ontario. This is another project completed for BaAM Productions, one of our repeat clients in the Toronto area. In this exhibit the visitor presses one of six buttons presented on the control rail of a 12' x 8' interactive map to see the historical railroad routes in Southern Ontario. Fail proof electronics designed, produced and installed on a tight timeline. The exhibit tapped into Mystus' long time expertise in electronics and our understanding of an essentially visual experience. We've done several interactive maps but this one is different in that the lights were sequenced to have a theatre marquis effect.

A Variety of Interactives Installs in Bruce County

Interactive exhibits on Energy, Waves and Hydrology plus an Interactive Map were created recently for the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre. The mechanical and electronic components were tailored to a traditional museum setting. The exhibit components included the illustration of energy use in the region, basic concepts in clean water, geological processes that shaped the terrain plus phenomenon based activities for visiting children. Success in the project pivoted around solid integration techniques in our shop that pulled together our in house talents and those of our associate shops. The biggest challenge was the diversity of requirement, especially in the realm of mechanical development.