Blinkenlights Reloaded - The Matrix Returns

An anonymous reader writes "On the occasion of this year's Chaos Communication Congress some hackers of the German CCC have set up another Blinkenlights installation in Berlin (they use the glass facade of a house as a giant computer screen). It is on the same house as from September 2001 till February 2002 but with similar capabilities to the installation in Paris in September/October 2002. Heise has a story about this (German, here's the Google translation), but actually there's better information on the project website itself."

Slashdotted!

Them's lights aren't "blinken" anymore!

Re:Slashdotted!

Unless you're talking about their router's network traffic lights... which are probably blinken like crazy... ;)

Blinkenlights on the blink

First ever faster-than-light Slashdotting, apparently. I wonder if anyone in Berlin suffered from a flicker-induced seizure before the house went completely dark.

When will the US get one?!

I keep waiting for someone in the US to start one of these up... anyone know if there's one in the works anywhere? (Perhaps I should get up off my lazy butt and put one together...)

Re:When will the US get one?!

Several similar projects preceded the Berlin Blinkenlights.

La Bastille: A Tech House Installation, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
10 x 10 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/ [techhouse.org] [techhouse.org]
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/04/16/2148245.shtm l [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org]

Marnix 2001, Brussels, Belgium
52 x 7 matrix of RGB lights
Links:
http://marnix2001.bbl.be/ [marnix2001.bbl.be] [marnix2001.bbl.be]

MIT's Green Building Sound (VU) Meter, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
9 x 1 matrix of red lights
Links:
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1993/green_bldg _vu_meter/green_bldg_vu_meter.html [mit.edu] [mit.edu]

Clickscape 98, Linz, Austria
13 x 8 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.servus.at/clickscape98/ [servus.at] [servus.at]

Poli-uni students dorm, Warsaw, Poland
14 x 16 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.astercity.net/~kvas/riviera.jpg [astercity.net] [astercity.net]

Atlanta Will have Blinkinlights Feb/March 2004

Atlanta is getting one for Valentines day... and it's gonna be in color! See: http://wonderwindow.com/ww_schedule.htm [wonderwindow.com]

In January and February 2004, we will be transforming Atlantic Station, the newly constructed 30-story office building on the northern perimeter of the Georgia Tech campus, into the world's largest public-access video display screen. Through the magic of modern technology, and a lot of hard work, we will be installing computer controlled RGB floodlight arrays, and the associated control hardware, behind each and every one of the 486 windows which comprise the main glass facade of the building... in effect turning the window grid into a real-time addressable, video-capable pixel grid. The public will be invited to submit their own messages, animations, photos and videos via the website 24/7... which will then be displayed nightly on the building, 250 feet tall!

Volunteers are needed to pull this off; email [e-mail] to help!

already down, down, down

they set em up....we knock em down

In a related story...

Blinkenlights servers network cards are running a blinkenlight version 'Matrix: Slashdotted'

Achtung!

Das vebzite ist geslaschdottert, habben sie keine speigel, bitte?

Ja, un der blinkenlichtkonzept ist ubercool, duden! Ich vil ein blinkenlicht fur meinen desktaupkomputer fur Kerstmis.

Oh jeez, I can't keep the accent up. Anyone got a mirror?

Just something to think about:

Just something to think about while it's slashdotted. At some point last year, I believe, the blinkenlights people added support into mplayer so that they can play back any video clips on the matrix. It should be interesting what they do this year.

Their servers

I'm sure "BlinkenLights" accurately describes the front of the server.

In case of slashdotting...

Das Machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren musten keepen das cotten-pickenen hands in das pockets - relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights.

Ascii Matrix

Not quite on topic, especially because it's a different blinkenlights, but this article reminded me of it:

$ telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 24

Terminal window should be 200x59, with black text on white background for best results.

Some people have way to much time.

Re:Ascii Matrix

Nice.

You've managed to slashdot a * TELNET * server.

What's next, slashdotting a bunch of pigeons? jeebus.

Turkey guts [slashdot.org], by the way.

Article Text

Blinkenlights Reloaded
The Matrix returns!


From December 22th, 2003 to January 4th, 2004 there will be a short revival of our Berlin installation: Blinkenlights Reloaded. The building Haus des Lehrers - currently under reconstruction - will be operated as we did it before. A new version of BlinkenPaint lets you create movies and you can play the interactive game Pong and activate your personal loveletters with your mobile phone.

Pong and your loveletters await you when you dial 0190-987654. A call is EUR 1,24 per minute (with every second counted). The income goes to the CCC to cover operational costs so that we can keep Blinkenlights free from ads now and in the future.

Blinkenlights Reloaded uses the technology we have developed for Arcade in Paris last year. That means greyscales. Version 3 of BlinkenPaint supports this as well as our new movie file format BML.

We invite you to send us your animations which we will bring to life on the big screen. And it works like this: [1] create your movies with BlinkenPaint, [2] save them in a text file (BML) and [3] attach it to an e-mail to [e-mail]

If the movie is a personal Blinkenlights Loveletter and you want to get a code to activate your movie yourself at any time, send it to [e-mail] instead.

We are happy to be able to bring Blinkenlights back to life and hope it won't be the last time. For us the first installation was big fun and this time it should no less. If you don't know the first incarnation, check out our documentation video.

We also hope that we won't get flooded by movies. We are going to be quite busy during as there is the Chaos Communication Congress taking place at the same time just next to the building. So things can get lost. But we are willing to have a look at everything we get, but we are just not going to make promises that your movie will run.

Nothing beats the Burroughs B-205

The old Burroughs B-205 console is seen all over the place in various movies & TV
(the old 1960's Batman TV series...all the batcomputers are B205 consoles)
They are the ultimate in Blinkenlights.

Pics!? :)

http://www.ripserve.com/perkins/blinkenlights/phot os/1.html [ripserve.com]

http://www.adognamedfish.com/gallery/blinkenlights / [adognamedfish.com]

Video

Well it looks like it has been slashdotted, but you can get some video of it elsewhere... Blinken Lights [toxicavenger.de]

Might as well muse on the nature of Slashdotting..

since it's already down. I've often wondered what would happen if Slashdot had a link to Fark, and in retaliation Drew linked it right back to Slashdot. Which one would crash first?

Aww...

they love us. We *heart* you to :)

Rus

Paris Movies

While the server's out for the count, you may wish to watch some clips from the last one they did in Paris:

http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Blinkenlights/ [acc.umu.se]

Damn cool.

"Blinkenlights Reloaded uses the technology we have developed for Arcade in Paris last year. That means greyscales. Version 3 of BlinkenPaint supports this as well as our new movie file format BML."

So it'll look pretty similar, I imagine.

Re:Paris Movies

Damn, though you were going to point me to some Paris Hilton movies...

ATTENTION

This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished
the blinkenlights.

Tetris on MIT's Green Building

This reminds me of a hack I discussed with some friends in college, though we never got around to pulling it off: rigging the lights in the rooms of the Green Building [pthbb.org] at MIT [mit.edu] to make a big Tetris screen. A Media Lab guy made a Java applet representation [mit.edu] of it, but I don't know that it has actually been done on the building itself. A few years ago it was rigged up as a VU meter [mit.edu], though.

Fluro's are not dead

Hey, it is a pitty that the site got hammered so fast the whole concept looks really interesting. I once was thinking about building a TV Screen to DMX512 convertor to do something like this.

... anyway for interests sake I would just like to mention that fluroscent lighting can be dimmed these days. Most people don't know this. To me it is strange that there is so much talk about LEDs and their dynamic effects when fluros offer a much cheaper alternative for slow colour changing applications.

Page Text

Blinkenlights.de front page text:

Celebrating its 20th anniversary [www.ccc.de] the Chaos Computer Club [www.ccc.de] has made a special present to itself and the city of Berlin. From September 12th, 2001 to February 23rd, 2002, the famous "Haus des Lehrers" (house of the teacher) office building at Berlin Alexanderplatz has been enhanced to become world's biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights (a term defined by the Jargon File [jargonfile.com]).

The upper eight floors of the building were transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 front windows. A computer controlled each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.

During the night, a constantly growing number of animations could be seen. But there was an interactive component as well: you were able to play the old arcade classic Pong [slashdot.org] on the building using your mobile phone and you could place your own loveletters [slashdot.org] on the screen as well.

Blinkenlights was up and running at until February 23rd, 2002 [slashdot.org], running 23 weeks and 5 days in total. During that period, we constantly improved its feature set. Even now, work on Blinkenlights is not completed. The software has been released [slashdot.org] as Free Software under GPL. Our documentation video [slashdot.org] shows all aspects of the project in 11 minutes.

For the friends of Blinkenlights we have prepared a little trailer movie [QuickTime 5 Format, 3,2 MB [slashdot.org]] [MPEG-1 Format, 3 MB [slashdot.org]]. If you want the soundtrack of the trailer have a look here [uni-bonn.de].

Overview

[slashdot.org] Using your mobile phone you could play Pong [slashdot.org] with Blinkenlights or your friend. The program Blinkenpaint [slashdot.org] enables you to create your own animations allowing you to take part in our contest [slashdot.org].

For the nerds there is a description of the Blinkenlights Movie format [slashdot.org] and a couple of nice tools [slashdot.org] to display and convert your animations. A look behind the scenes [slashdot.org] reveals some technical details of our system.

A list of press reports [slashdot.org] about Blinkenlights und a couple of interesting links to other projects [slashdot.org] complete the overview. Get a regular update on what is going on with the project on our News [slashdot.org] page.

WebCam

Those who wanted to have a remote view on the building were able to have a look at the pictures of our webcam. The WebCam is no longer in operation. We are going to publish the WebCam picture archive here soon.

The BerlinOnline WebCam [berlin.de] looked at Blinkenlights as well, although it was a bit more distant than our cam. Maybe you find some nice pictures in their archive as well.

Contact

Although the installation itself is now dismantled, the Blinkenlights project group is still active. Your contact for inquiries of all kinds is Tim Pritlove [e-mail] [mailto].

If you are interested getting information on our future activities, please send a mail to [e-mail] [mailto].

Re:Page Text

Celebrating its 20th anniversary

It really amazes me just how much longevity the CCC has displayed, despite having gotten mixed up in scrambles that would have totally taken apart anyone less hardy. From concerns that one of their members might have been bumped [landfield.com] off [wired.com], working for the KGB [itsecurity.com], breaking into NASA [phrack.com]... and somehow still finding time to run the Blinkenlights and the congress every year.

I know I would have cashed my chips and left a group like that a long time ago. Hats off guys, how do you do it?

YLFI

Simular Holiday Inn Hartford CT.

I recall there being a Holiday Inn off the 91 freeway in hartford CT. During Christmas they woudl place lights in the windows to form christmas trees and other simple graphics. I even remember once when the Patriots were to move to hartford I drove by and it spelled out NFL. i'm sure ofcourse it's all l manually done but cool none the less.

One Christmas in London...

I was walking past Selfridges dept. store and noticed their Christmas Lights display. It looked like the worst kind of modern art: a series of identical objects stacked against the window, with lights flashing randomly over them.

But as I was going home by bus, I was far enough away (and the traffic jam gave me plenty of time to look) to notice the lights were using the objects as a billboard to scroll messages.

It was wonderfully impressive to witness, even on that small scale.

Oh my god ..

.. for a minute i read .. Matrix Redone .. That would be to good to be truth

Text from the website

I was lucky enough to get the text from here [blinkenlights.de], already, so here it is:

Blinkenlights Reloaded

Die Matrix kehrt zuruck!

Vom 22.12. bis zum 04.01.2003 wird es ein kurzes Revival unserer Installation aus Berlin geben: Blinkenlights Reloaded. Uber die Weihnachtsfeiertage bespielen wir das noch in Sanierung befindliche Haus des Lehrers erneut und nach bekanntem Rezept. Eine neue Version vonBlinkenPaint erlaubt das Erstellen von Animationen und die Pong und die Loveletters konnen wieder uber das Telefon abgerufen werden.

Die Telefondienste stehen wieder unter der Rufnummer 0190-987654 bereit. Ein Anruf kostet EUR 1,24 pro Minute (sekundengenaue Abrechnung). Die Einnahmen fliessen als Spende an den CCC zur Deckung der Betriebskosten, damit Blinkenlights auch in Zukunft werbefrei bleibt.

Blinkenlights Reloaded setzt die Technologie ein, die wir fur die InstallationArcade im letzten Jahr in Paris entwickelt haben. Damit konnen wir auch mit Graustufen umgehen. Die neue Version 3 von BlinkenPaint unterstutzt dies genauso wie das von uns bevorzugte Format BML.

Wir laden Euch erneut dazu ein, das ihr uns Animationen schickt, die wir dann auf dem Haus zum Spielen bringen. Das geht so: [1] Erstellt die Filme mit BlinkenPaint, [2] speichert sie als Textdatei ab (BML) und [3] hangt dann diese Datei an eine Mail an und schickt Sie an
[e-mail]

Wenn der Film ein Blinkenlights Loveletter ist und Ihr einen Freischaltcode fur das Telefon erhalten wollt, um den Film jederzeit selbst aufrufen zu konnen, schickt den Film stattdessen an [e-mail].

Wir freuen uns, wieder die Gelegenheit zu haben, Blinkenlights zum Laufen zu bringen und hoffen, dass es auch (noch) nicht das letzte Mal war. Fur uns war die erste Installation ein grosser Spass und das soll er nun wieder werden (wer die Originalinstallation nicht kennt, kann sich ja nochmal einen Eindruck durch unser Video machen).

Ausserdem hoffen wir, dass uns die Einsendungen nicht uberfluten. Da wir alle wahrend der Leuchtzeit auch noch kraftig mit dem Chaos Communication Congress beschaftigt sind, kann auch mal was verloren gehen. Wir bitten um Nachsicht, werden uns aber bemuhen alle Anfragen zu bearbeiten.

You all speak german, so there is no need for me to translate it, right? :-)

They have done this in Hungary as well,

check out the vids: http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/1vid.avi http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/2vid.avi http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/3vid.avi http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/4vid.avi http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/5vid.avi http://index.hu/cikkepek/0310/tech/6vid.avi and here is the link.. not in english though :( http://index.hu/tech/hardver/sch1023/

Controllable Christmas Lights ala Blinkenlights

Check out these Christmas Lights [komar.org] - there is not only a Christmas Webcam, [komar.org] but you can also turn the lights ON & OFF ... and pan/zoom the webcam.

This got Slashdotted [slashdot.org] last year, but the what's New for 2003 [komar.org] says a "beefed up web server and faster ISP connectivity" - if nothing else, maybe the neighbors need need to see the Blinkenlights courtesy of Slashdot again?!? ;-)

Rough translation by me!

Alright, here's the deal:
I am a native German speaker and therefore i am subject to mistakes. Right now, I am having problems concentrating, so don't blame me for any mistakes. By continuing reading, you confirm that you have read and agreed to the above disclaimer. Here you go:

Blinkenlights reloaded

This year there will be another Blinkenlights installation, this time, after a detour to paris, once again in Berlin. From 22th December until 4th January the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) will again be playing them on Haus des Lehrers [The Teacher's House; translator's note] with a light installation. A new version of BlinkenPaint makes the creation of animations possible. The "ping pong"-game and provided "love movies" can once again be requested by phone by calling [from outside of Germany, pre-dial: "+49 190", from inside: "0190"; translator's note] 987654. Each call is EUR 1,24 per minute [from Germany! It will be more, if you call from anywhere else; translator's note]. The money will go to the CCC to pay the amount due to operate BlinkenLights, so it can be maintained without advertising in the future, said the CCC.
For Blinkenlights Reloaded, the name of this year's event, the same technology will be used, which has been developed for Arcade in Paris. So grey scale will be possible, which is supported by the new version 3 of BlinkenPaint. Everybody interested can send animations as email attachments to [e-mail]. They will be played on the house. The movies need to be created with BlinkenPaint previously and saved as a text-file in the BML-file-format.

Blinkenlights/BlinkenArea at Chaos Congress

During the 20th Chaos Congress there's also a big BlinkenArea with the Blinkenlights team and many model projects.

See BlinkenArea [wiki.ccc.de] for more information.

We would be very pleased if you can come to visit us. But we're also planing to run a telnet-based real-time BlinkenStream and a Webcam for those who can not come.

Fight club?

Can't remember this from Matrix but am I the only one to see the connection with this house and the scene from Fight Club where the windows are burning making a house look like a big smiley?

Re:THIS gets a story...

In my mind, Blinkenlights is a *tad* less important than our getting betrayed by our elected officials.

For SHAME!! This is AMURICA!! Don't you realize that flashy blinky things are of far more importance than our own government? I mean, really, pointing out government hippocracies and caring about what happens? You must be some kind of commie TERRORIST!!! Go back to Canada, Ivan.

Now if you'll excuse me, FOX News is on and I wouldn't want to miss any Fair and Balanced (tm) News (tm)

*Turns on Das Blinkentelevision*

*Drool*

Re:THIS gets a story...

Story on anti-spam law, fine. What they are COVERING UP, you dingbat, is the fact that politicians are now SPAMMING US.

Re:Never mind matrix....

And how about a KONG [netdoor.com] on a building?

Re:Never mind matrix....

If you would read the fucking article, you'd see that that's exactly what this setup does, among other things.

Re:Never mind matrix....

I HAVE played Pong on the Blinkenlights building. Standing in a public place and controlling a pong game with your Mobile on such a BIG "Screen" is kinda cool. I played against a friend of mine. I lost.