Marble Speedway

Marble Speedway at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York is a Permanent Exhibit that we built with Story Factory Studios.

This was an incredible project to work on; it is a large-scale "marble" run for custom designed billiard balls that travel about 350' of track.

The incredibly complex project took more than a year to complete with at least one full time staff member working from November, 2024 to December 2025. FBU's Marble Speedway team grew to 5 active team-members during the busiest parts of the project.

Some of the features of the project include:

• Industrial-grade device Edge Computing Network
• 36+ interconnected components
• 24 In-track interactive components
• 6 Arcade style kiosks
• Custom Machine Learning ball identification system
• Live, track level video streaming
• A system of Display Signage and Tracking Applications
• 26x4' Custom Display
• Advanced audio system
• Custom 2 path helical lift
• Custom ball elevator
• 2 custom industrial conveyor elevators

At the outset, The Strong had already created a fairly robust vision of what the project could be. Fire Burns Up worked closely with our partner to lead the project further with an eye to the experience design itself.

Fire Burns Up contributed many, many pieces of this project including:

• Creative Ideation/ Brainstorming
• Project Management
• Experience Design/ Advocacy
• UX Architecture
• Mechanical/ CAD Design
• System Architecture
• Software Development
• Hardware Development
• Electrical System Design
• Network System Design
• AI Training and POC
• Documentation/ Drawing Author
• Prototyping, Fabrication, and Installation Lead
• Technical Lead