Endless opportunities with The Gadget Show

What do you get when you cross one of the best and longest serving tech shows with our code, creativity and design? Well, we’ll come on to that shortly.

It was though, a great honour to be asked to partner with Channel 5’s The Gadget Show.

Usually when we work with a client, we’re given a brief that is closely aligned to their business needs, and then, following an initial discovery session, we deliver a response combining our creativity and code.

On this occasion, we were given a blank canvas, other than gathering that presenter Jon Bentley had been tasked with going up against a professional florist, and that he required our help to create the ultimate floral bouquet, quickly.Interactive floral bouquet

So that we were able to get the creative juices flowing, we invited Jon and the team up to our Leeds office, where creative director Andy Park, director of strategy Shay Moradi, and designer Marta Rei, presented a number of ideas, before settling on an interactive installation based around a floral bouquet.

As you’ll have gathered, this wasn’t going to be your standard Mother’s Day bouquet, folks! Oh no!

The concept we decided on allowed visitors to interact with the bouquet by using a familiar piano interface to play a melody of their choosing, which was then translated into lights, music and smells. Each of the seven physical flowers played a note with a corresponding colour and smell.

Easy, hey!? Well, not quite. In addition to custom programming and bespoke fabricated and handcrafted components, there was also an audio component to the installation, which had to be delivered within a stringent time frame.The finer detail

• All the components were controlled in real-time with an app written in Node.js.
• Each of the seven flowers had the capacity to be individually messaged to show a colour in a particular sequence.
• The flowers each had an RGB LED underneath it and were also connected to a Raspberry Pi, which communicated wirelessly with the server on the computer, or a server in the cloud.
• The music component was played through a separate machine (which also communicates with the server), and each sound could be customised.
• The server was able to communicate with the Moodo API to emit scent combinations and strengths through the Moodo.
• Hue lights completed the ambiance of the piece, and were synchronised with the bouquet via the Hue API.

The result?

We’ll let you decide…

About The Gadget Show

Broadcast on Channel 5, The Gadget Show is one of the most successful and long running technology shows on British television.

The programme, enjoying its 29th series, is presented by Jon Bentley, Craig Charles, Ortis Deley, and Georgie Barrat, and includes a series of challenges, reviews, features and news.

The Gadget Show brand has also been used to create commercial live events, international format sales, and has audiences in 228 countries around the world.

For a more visual look at our work with The Gadget Show, head over to our behind the scenes gallery,and project case study.

Alternatively, if you have an idea for an interesting installation or experiential masterpiece, get in touch today, we’d be happy to hear from you.