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MIT Completes "Holy Grail of Hacks," Turns Green Building into a Game of Tetris
- agwa 14y agoThis was done at Brown in 2000 (albeit in monochrome): http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/ http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/ Woz even showed up to play it: http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/photos/woz_play.jpg http://techhouse.brown.edu/bastille/photos/woz_play.jpg
- aw3c2 14y agoAlso http://blinkenlights.net/ http://blinkenlights.net/
- svdree 14y agoDelft University of Technology (the Netherlands) did it in 1995 ;-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwNQqePk8Kg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwNQqePk8Kg
- Tloewald 14y agoSeems to run faster too, and use the existing lighting.
- artursapek 14y agoWow. I'm 2 blocks from that building atm. This is great.
- rje 14y agoI 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.
- bhickey 14y agoI 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.
- rje 14y agoNo 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!
- miwallac 14y agoI created an account just for this: I dated Clara's sister for 7 years, and I still run into her brother occasionally, from the other side of the country. Pointless post is pointless.
- mkramlich 14y agoI can imagine Woz sitting there thinking, "I can do this in 2 chips, 8 transistors and ..."
- gsiener 14y agoThanks, I was about to post this (my friend's laptop is the one they used for the controls). Go Brown!
- speleding 14y agoAnd it was done before that in 1995 at Delft University, as the article mentions. (I saw it there!). Playing Angry Birds on the side of a building would be more with the time.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ilamont 14y agoMIT Hack page, with photos: http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2012/tetris/ http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2012/tetris/
- soup10 14y agoIs there any video of this? The colored lighting is really cool.
- kmccarth 14y agoyup, just found it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAIPUGO1iko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAIPUGO1iko
- fridek 14y agoPolish 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.youtube.com/watch?v=YoFdS5lWXg8 http://www.piwo.pwr.wroc.pl/?lang=en http://www.piwo.pwr.wroc.pl/?lang=en
- Dove 14y agoThat'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?
- grinich 14y agoYes.
- dmcgregor 14y agohaha, great response. This whole dialogue reminds me of a Louis CK line: "Everything is amazing, and no one is happy."
- chimeracoder 14y agoCould you explain? I've seen MIT do similar 'hacks' in the past with various patterns in the windows ('SOX' for the 2004 World Series is the only one I remember off the top of my head). Nothing was this elaborate, but I imagine that the hard part is actually setting up the system to coordinate the actual lights turning off/on.... and it seems like they've had that for a while.
- nickm12 14y agoI was a student at MIT in the early 90s and Tetris on the Green Building was considered the "holy grail of hacks" back then. Definitely a major accomplishment, particularly with color and also lots of props to Brown for getting there first!
- arbitrarywords 14y agoI still don't quite get it. Presumably the story is more interesting than "we got permission and used lots of wire", but the first couple of pages of google results don't really explain how.
- nickm12 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ryanwjackson 14y agoCertainly 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/ http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2011/flag_on_9_11/).
- dlaw 14y agoThe 9/11 hack was the first test of the same lights used for Tetris.
- jiggy2011 14y agoWere 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?
- dlaw 14y agoThe lights in the windows are custom fabbed PCBs, completely independent of the building lights.
- tedmiston 14y agoCan someone explain how the system communicates from a high level?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- simonw 14y agoI 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.
- shangaslammi 14y agoLooks similar to the "Mikontalo Lights" project in Finland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ril6OYSKD3A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ril6OYSKD3A
- aestetix 14y agoNaturally I gotta plug the CCC's Project Blinkenlights: http://blinkenlights.net/ http://blinkenlights.net/
- Tloewald 14y agoThe player in the video is frustratingly awful.