Vibe Check (2020)

Lauren Lee McCarthy and Kyle McDonald

As tracking and surveillance solutions are proposed to guide us through the current crisis, we enact another control system through the passive observation of our neighbors. Are they a threat, or essential to retaining our feeling of humanness? We notice our heightened sense of interdependence. Vibe Check appropriates common surveillance tools including face recognition and expression analysis to catalog the emotional effect exhibition visitors have on one another. Some are identified as evoking expressions of happiness, disgust, sadness, surprise, or boredom. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are playfully alerted to who these people are, and as they leave, they may find they’ve earned this distinction themselves.

Commissioned by HeK and MU for the exhibition Real Feelings.

Preparation

Install Ubuntu 18.04
Install the ssh server sudo apt install openssh-server
Install curl and zerotier: sudo apt install curl && curl -s https://install.zerotier.com | sudo bash
Join the zerotier network sudo zerotier-cli join <network id>
Add the network to your local ~/.ssh/config and run ssh-copy-id
Install the NVIDIA drivers (more info in database/readme.md)
Install Miniconda (not Anaconda)
Install git and checkout the repository sudo apt install git && git clone https://github.com/lmccart/vibe-check.git
Install Chrome
Install nvm and npm install --global fast-cli

Setup

Follow the readme.md in each folder:

database/
app/
face/
automate/

Additional configuration

Disable all desktop notifications:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.notifications show-banners false

Status check

CPU should be busy: run htop and look for CPU activity.
GPUs should be busy: run nvidia-smi
Services should be running: cd automate && ./status
Logs should be updating journalctl -feu vibe-check-face
Cameras should be sending data (active) cd rpi && ./cameras status

Start-up and shut-down

Install XBindKeys:

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys xbindkeys-config
xbindkeys --defaults > ~/.xbindkeysrc
xbindkeys-config

Add an action for control+shift + q pointing to:

bash /home/vibecheck/Documents/vibe-check/automate/killall-chrome.sh

And for control+shift + c pointing to:

bash /home/vibecheck/Documents/vibe-check/automate/open-chrome.sh

Set the machine to automatically reboot daily at 6am:

sudo crontab -e

Add the following line:

0 6   *   *   *    /sbin/shutdown -r +5

And then using "Startup Application Preferences", add the open-chrome.sh to run on startup.

Problems

"System problem detected"

To clear the crash cache run:

sudo rm /var/crash/*

TeamViewer won't start

Use x0vncserver. Run x0vncserver -passwordfile ~/.vnc/passwd -display :0 remotely and ssh -N -L 5901:localhost:5900 <hostname> locally then Screen Share to localhost:5901.

Screens won't stay rotated

Two possibilities:

The native Ubuntu monitor configuration in ~/.config/monitors.xml is overriding the /etc/X11/xorg.conf generated by nvidia-settings. Go into the native Ubuntu "Displays" preferences panel and rotate the screens there.
Make sure to run nvidia-settings from the command line using sudo. Otherwise the xorg.conf will not be saved correctly.

pip install hangs indefinitely on Ubuntu

This might be because pip is waiting for the keyring to be unlocked. Add this to ~/.profile:

export PYTHON_KEYRING_BACKEND=keyring.backends.null.Keyring

The screens do not show images

Check the Chrome terminal with ctrl-shift-J (outside kiosk mode). Make sure there is a data.json and images/ files.

lmccart / vibe-check