SMART's BrickCon Display

I want to thank everyone who participated in this year's SMART display at
BrickCon. It was absolutely amazing! We couldn't have done it without everyone's
help. Every element was crucial, and worked amazingly! Named "BallMageddon"
because either it was going to be a catastrophic failure, or a spectacular
exhibit that everyone who saw it would remember for a LONG time! I'm very
pleased to say it was the latter!

Here's who contributed:

Gus designed the display and an amazing 'wave' that carried the balls in front
of the display.

Kyle built the final lift that brought the balls into the display, as well as
the sorter that took the balls coming out of the display, and returned them to
their proper bins.

Andrew built the "rainbow stairs", one of the two most commented on parts of the
display, which took the balls coming out of the display and gave them their
initial lift to get them rolling towards their destination.

Sean built a wonderful ball escalator that took the balls from near ground-level
and got them all the way to the top of the bins where they got sorted by Kyle's
sorter.

Of course the wonderful and beautiful hoppers built by Dan were essential. I'm
not sure how many versions he built before creating one that wouldn't jam. Now
he understands the many ways that balls will form voids when you try to pull one
out of a pile. I'm not sure that he entirely believed us when he volunteered to
build the hoppers. Also worth mentioning here is Doug's interesting pattern to
stretch bricks to allow such large bins to be built with a limited supply of