Learn, hack!

URL

http://mirror.fem-net.de/CCC/27C3/mp4-h264-HQ/27c3-4046-en-all_colours_are_beautiful.mp4

File name

27c3-4046-en-all_colours_are_beautiful.mp4

File size

428.6 MB

MD5

7c244648368d8c82f9ca9f077ad430c2

SHA1

5f16803e9016d8e76b877e60df6f7c9bc2145d47

Starting in the beginning of August 2010 and lasting until the mid of November, the project AllColoursAreBeautiful by the Munich chapter of the Chaos Computer Club was serving as a platform for interested people on the world to illuminate, animate and interact with the front of a vacant department store in Munich. The windows were illuminated by remotely controllable, networked RGB LEDs in colorfully light the facade. A web editor was developed to ease the creation of animations at home or in front of the building with a laptop or mobile phone. Furthermore, animations could be put in a queue by sending a simple text message (SMS). Running animations could be viewed with a client program or by a webcam stream. Over 400 animations were created by the public. Next year another, bigger installation in Munich is planned. The purpose of our talk is to outline the infrastructure we built for this project and inspire other hackers to use it for rolling their own installation in their hometown. We will explain our open hardware and software design in the background and talk about our rationale behind our design decisions and comment on possible improvements in future iterations. We won't forget to include the biggest fails, fnords and pitfalls concering funding, authorizations and communication. At the Congress we will rebuild our installation using boxes. Interested hackers are very welcome to play with this colorful blinkenwall by writing animations and games.