Recycling in Action: Interactive Sandbox

Since late last year, the library atrium (second floor) has been home to an interactive sandbox, the brainchild of the IT team's Petr Holek, who came across an interesting video that inspired him to implement his idea at NTK together with other colleagues. "Some were in charge of securing hardware, and others installed software," said Holek.

Many of the items used to build the sandbox were recycled. "We used an old projector from Balling Hall, discarded carpet which was in storage, and the wooden pallets used to ship our new disk array. Head of IT Ondřej Koch donated a Kinect 3D camera. The only things we purchased were sand and the fabric coating on the pallets. Total investment: 200 CZK," Holek noted.  

Construction of the sandbox took only two days, and IT team members ensure its ongoing operation. Every second day they make sure the carpet under the sandbox is vacuumed and that the sand itself has the proper moisture. "The sandbox weighs approximately a hundred and fifty kilos, and we have fifty kilos of reserve sand in storage," said Holek. "The sandbox will probably stay where it is as long as people enjoy it. After that, we will analyze the components and re-use them."

DIY at Home

Full instructions for making your own sandbox at home are available online. We followed instructions offered by Oliver Kreylos at the University of California, Davis.

Essentials include a computer with a good graphics card, a 3D camera, a digital data project, a box, and sand.

You can find Sandbox on the 2nd floor of National Library of Technology.