Backstage

Backstage

While the original Blinkenlights Installation in Berlin had been set up with very basic and simple technology, the Bibliothèque nationale de France offered new challenges to the team.

The desire to be able to display various levels of grey contributed to the decision to completely redesign and invent the necessary technology.

Hardware

The simple, mechanical relays of the installation in the "Haus des Lehrers" were replaced by a combination of self-developed control computers (Matrix Control Unit) and electronic semiconductor relays. Because the 20 floors are completely separated due to fire protection rules, we installed 20 Matrix Control Computers in the building, interconnected via the internal computer network. Another computer on the 18th floor (Chaos Control Center) sent the pixel data stream to the matrix control units.

The big window size (1.80m x 3.60m) made it necessary to use a second lamp for each window to ensure the 2:1 format was perfectly visible and to have a good light coverage even for lower brightness values. 20 floors with 26 windows resulted in 1040 lamps that were accessed in pairs.

Software

The software was developed further. The Blinkenlights Chaos Control Center now featured a plug-in system that allowed the incorporation of more than one game and other interactive applications and that also invited other programmers to contribute code.

The MCU software was developed on the basis of the RTAI Linux Realtime extension.

The ISDN control software was enhanced significantly as well and was now completely dialog-oriented. Called numbers and calling numbers could be detected. This allowed for funny features like answering in french for subscribers of french networks and german for german subscribers. Everybody else was offered an english interface.

The Arcade Crew

Hardware, software and the setup in Paris were largely the work of this team. Many others actively contributed to the success of the project.

	Antenne Springborn
	Björn Barnekow
	Carsten Schaeffer
	Carsten Wenzlow
	Daniel Mack
	Hannes Mehnert
	Herr Schmidt
	Jan Fels
	Michael "Papillon" Gerdes
	Michael Natterer
	Sven Neumann
	Thomas Fiedler
	Tim Pritlove
	Tobias Engel