

MIT Completes "Holy Grail of Hacks," Turns Green Building into a Game of Tetris - emarion
http://bostinno.com/2012/04/21/mit-completes-the-holy-grail-of-hacks-turning-the-green-building-into-a-game-of-tetris-slideshow/

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agwa
This was done at Brown in 2000 (albeit in monochrome):

<http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/>

Woz even showed up to play it:

<http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/photos/woz_play.jpg>

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rje
I was part of the team that worked on this way back in the day, and it was a
blast. It was a bunch of soldering, running wires, trying to debug all the
issues, etc. And then everything came together and it just worked.

Woz showing up was the icing on the cake, and it was definitely one of the
highlights of my college career.

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bhickey
I was a middle-schooler and my parents took me to play. I recall a bug where
if you rotated the square quickly enough it would travel upward. Someone
(maybe Clara?) whipped out a patch and recompiled.

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rje
No idea who'd have done the patch, it was really a team effort. I forget the
exact number, but there were 20+ contributors over the course of the project.
And by the time it was up and running a lot of us were crashing due to the
long hours. I only vaguely remember the first night it fired up, since I had
gone home to sleep after a long shift and someone came back to tell me that it
was finally working.

Awesome to hear from someone who got to play it!

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Dove
That's very cool and playful, but "Holy grail of hacks" seems a bit
overwrought. I don't want to be a naysaying jerk, and the whole thing _is_
cool, but . . . is this harder than it looks?

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grinich
Yes.

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dmcgregor
haha, great response. This whole dialogue reminds me of a Louis CK line:
"Everything is amazing, and no one is happy."

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fridek
Polish students show such demo every year on their P.I.W.O. display. It has a
10x12 resolution and supports 4 colours using 8 light bulbs in every window.
There is also animation editor available for download and an ongoing contest
for the best animation.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoFdS5lWXg8>

<http://www.piwo.pwr.wroc.pl/?lang=en>

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jiggy2011
Were the building administrators in on this? Or was it really a "hack"?

I'm assuming there must be some central computer controlling the lights,
either than or they attached something to / modified each light switch?

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dlaw
The lights in the windows are custom fabbed PCBs, completely independent of
the building lights.

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simonw
I can't find anywhere that details if this hack was done with permission from
the various occupants of the building. If they had to break in to every office
on that side of the building to install the equipment the hack becomes even
more impressive.

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ryanwjackson
Certainly not the first time students have hacked the Green Building's lights
(i.e. <http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2011/flag_on_9_11/>).

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dlaw
The 9/11 hack was the first test of the same lights used for Tetris.

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shangaslammi
Looks similar to the "Mikontalo Lights" project in Finland.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ril6OYSKD3A>

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ilamont
MIT Hack page, with photos:

<http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2012/tetris/>

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aestetix
Naturally I gotta plug the CCC's Project Blinkenlights:
<http://blinkenlights.net/>

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Tloewald
The player in the video is frustratingly awful.

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tedmiston
Can someone explain how the system communicates from a high level?

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soup10
Is there any video of this? The colored lighting is really cool.

~~~
kmccarth
yup, just found it on youtube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAIPUGO1iko>

