Mapping the past.

By Neil

One of the interesting projects I have been involved in over the winter is making props for the 'For Hearth, Home and Honour?' exhibition. This exhibition looks at how the lives of hundreds of Eastbourne men were transformed by the outbreak of World War One and the effect it had on those left behind.

One of the doors we erected in the exhibition.

A number of our Heritage volunteers have worked diligently to research these Eastbourne men and mark where they lived on a map. My job was to turn this traditional paper and pins map into an large interactive map to make it easy for visitors to see where everyone lived and if they survived the war or not.

The first task was to source the components needed to do the job. After looking through a seemingly never-ending series of LED listings online, I settled on some 3mm Red LED's which came with resistors. The small diameter of these LED's was particularly important as some of the addresses we needed to mark were very close together. 

Four of the 3mm red Led's in the top left and the rather pretty resistors.

Once I had drilled holes in each of the locations for the LED's to go in, it was nearly time to start soldering. With hundreds of LED's to be joined up I enlisted the help of someone whose soldering is much quicker and neater than mine!

Jon begins the intricate job of joining all the LED's up in two separate circuits

We took over part of the Outpost cafe and began plotting how to make it all work. I won't bore you all with the technicalities, but we needed to make sure all the LED's were evenly lit and the right brightness for viewing clearly. To do this we needed to make chains of 2, 3 or 4 LED's. Some nifty work with a soldering iron, a multi-meter and various combinations of resistors later we were happy with the results.

Multi-meter on hand for testing the circuits.

Many hours later (and lots of cups of tea) Jon and I had put all the LED's in the map boards and joined up all the circuits ready for them to be mounted in the exhibition. 

The back of the map board takes on a map like appearance of its own...

To see the full picture come and see 'For Hearth, Home and Honour?' when the Redoubt re-opens on the 21st March.