While the original Blinkenlights Installation in Berlin has been setup with very basic and simple technology, the Bibliothèque nationale de France offered new challenges to 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" was 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 have installed 20 Matrix Control Computers in the building, interconnected via the internal computer network. Another computer in the 18th floor (Chaos Control Center) sends 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 is perfectly visible and to have a good light coverage even for lower brightness values. 20 floors with 26 windows result in 1040 lamps that are accessed in pairs.
Software
The software was developed further. The Blinkenlights Chaos Control Center now features a plug-in system that allows the incorporation of more than one game and other interactive applications and that also invites other programmers to contribute code. Who is interested in developing applications for Arcade should contact us by e-mail.
The MCU software was developed on the basis of the RTAI Linux Realtime extension.
The ISDN control software has been enhanced significantly as well and is now completely dialog-oriented. Called numbers and calling numbers can be detected. This allows for funny features like answering in french for subscribers of french networks and german for german subscribers. Everybody else is offered an english interface.
