7 ms·
Das Blinkenlights
Got a boring server rack? Got a retro-computer project? Need some bling??
If you have a little electronics skill then you may want to make a few of these babies to let your server rack party like a 1970's mainframe.
Just a fun little project done over a couple of days at XMAS, and probably best not to install in the corporate server room!
- gnabgib 2y agoThis doesn't look like a valid Show HN. It is an interesting blog post (without the Show HN prefix), though! > Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. > Off topic: blog posts https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- thekevan 2y agoOh wow, I never read that and thought Show HN was simply, "Look at this cool thing I did."
- dang 2y agoIt basically is! but the rules provide a few guardrails.
- stephen_g 2y agoI disagree, on the very same page it says: > On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, you can post a video or detailed article. For books, a sample chapter is ok. While it's posted on a blog, I would say it meets the criteria for having the video and write-up showing off the cool thing that has been built. I think what that page is saying about blog posts is that you shouldn't post a Show HN as a 'look at this blog post I made about [some random topic]', as in when it's the blog post itself that you're showing off. It's not saying you can't post any blog post as a Show HN.
- dang 2y agoAs stephen_g pointed out, it's ok by the hardware exemption in https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. But I like the title Das Blinkenlights so have changed it anyway. @boznz: I hope that's ok! (The post is currently at #3 on the frontpage so there's not much need for it to be high on /show in any case.)
- boznz 2y agoAll good with me. Just assumed others might want to build one. Lots of empty rack space out there that might not mind shedding a few extra watts for some color. Also its nice to get noticed every now and then even if it is for the crappy stuff :-)
- Animats 2y ago> Now you need to remember this is not a metal panel it is a 1.6mm thick fibre-glass one, it does the job, but it wont take much abuse like a metal one will and flexes a little when handling it. That's when you design in a PC board stiffener. These are just pieces of metal, U-channel, L-channel, or solid bar, to add some structural strength. Cheap and easy, but rarely seen in hobbyist work. Any board with buttons or knobs or connectors unsupported for more than a few inches should have some stiffening. You have to allow space for stiffening bars when designing the board, and you need to place screw holes.
- thekevan 2y agoI can't wait until gaming builds start adopting this trend. I want to see a high end gaming rig but it looks like a server from a 1990s sci-fi movie.
- zaxomi 2y agoI'm planning to do something similar, but using addressable RGB LEDs (like WS2811, also known as neopixel). They are simple to work with. Each LED has 4 connections: GND, +5V, DATA IN and DATA OUT. Each LED grabs the first 24 bits of the data stream (8 bits for Red, Green and Blue) and sends the rest on DATA OUT for the next LED.
- edoceo 2y agoAnyone using todbot blink(1)? Also a fun USB RGB. https://blink1.thingm.com/ https://blink1.thingm.com/
- mulmen 2y agoVery cool. This scratches several itches. What data is this displaying? Are you tailing syslog and writing it to a serial output? Do you have some status monitor that assigns meaning to the lights?
- boznz 2y agoNothing exciting if you look at the code near the end. for(i=0;i<8;i++) LEDRegister[i]=LEDRegister[i]+TMR0+addr; Note this is also technically a bug, the for(i=0;i<8;i++) loop executes so fast that TMR0 (an independent PIC timer that increments every 740uS) is usually the same value added to each LEDregister. I actually added +i to the end of this line in my version, but I'm guessing someone making this will tweak the code to do whatever they want or store some patterns as consts. The code really is quite crappy now that I look at it sober, the watchdog timer is turned off and should be on, there is no checksum on the serial data, procedures called from interrupts, defines with double-slash comments, all stand out like a sore thumb. Lucky it just blinks lights and doesn't run a dialysis machine!
- mulmen 2y agoPretty sure that’s the random junk it makes up if there’s no serial data coming in. The comment says: > // no data coming in so do something interesting My question is what they send over serial.
- boznz 2y agoApologies for not reading the question. I currently have a small program on the RPi NAS which polls my AWS server showing a few metrics, uptime, load, traffic and latest sessionID, but it was off at the time of the video as it is pretty static. Only the top panel is actually used for this the others are just random for now work in progress I guess. For my retro computer, it is still a bit of a mess, but should be easy to clock out the 16 CPU registers into a serial stream which I will hook a small micro into to send it over a UART. I have actually gotten more excited about completing the retro computer project since having the lights to look at.
- keyle 2y agoI would feel so productive! Well done.
- croes 2y agoNitpicking Blinkenlights isn’t a german word it’s pseudo german for Blinklicht originating from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights#:~:text=on%20the%20panels-,etymology,-edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights#:~:text=on%20the... But the Chaos Computer Club built light installations called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blinkenlights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blinkenlights
- emmelaich 2y agoobvious? that's the fun of it.
- unkeen 2y agoThe linked article begins with "[Blinkenlights] Probably the only German word I know"
- Sharlin 2y agoIronically the author likely knows some actual German words like Schadenfreude and Kindergarten.
- teddyh 2y agoThe list is quite long: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_German_expressions_in_English&oldid=1267874277 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_German_ex...>
- Over2Chars 2y ago@croes I was thinking the same thing (knowing no german, but having a hunch). And the CCC project was a whole building. For his example, I was expecting a whole cage with some tricked out lights, maybe some smoke effects (I can see new colo signs being updated "no cardboard,no smoke machines allowed"), a sub-woofer playing some chiptunes, etc.
- not2b 2y ago
- Over2Chars 2y agoLike they used to say in Art school during critiques "go big! I'd like to see what this looks like bigger"
- benbristow 2y agoHearing 'blinkenlights' reminds me of the still very much up 'towel.blinkenlights.nl' telnet server which plays an ASCII art rendition of Star Wars if you dial into it. There's a joke if you have IPV6 connectivity where if you use IPV4 it says it has full colour support but if you do... well, it doesn't!
- Insanity 2y agoCame to post the same..! Someone wrote about it on Medium: https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/telnetting-watching-star-wars-but-doing-it-with-style-44ba9655ef1f https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/telnetting-watching-star-wa... Nice bit of nostalgia for me.
- bqmjjx0kac 2y agoNot to be confused with the Justine Tunney's debugger named Blinkenlights: https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/ https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/
- hinkley 2y agoNICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robertlagrant 2y agoYes - I was coming here for that.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> Working C Code below for those in the know. It would be nice to explicitly attach a (FOSS) license to this. (Apologizes if there is one and I just missed it)
- boznz 2y agoBoz here, I just assumed a design so obvious would not need one, my bad, anyway it is totally public domain so knock yourself out.
- TacticalCoder 2y ago[dead]
- 46Bit 2y agoThe effect is really cool. I like the idea of visualizing data flowing through work systems like this. I think I'll go for 3D-printed or laser-cut panels instead though - would work out cheaper. Thanks :)
- bmoe 2y agoThis looks very much like a Connection Machine. A red LED would light up when its corresponding processor was active.
- teddyh 2y agoNo, IIRC, on a Connection Machine, a light blinks when the corresponding CPU is active. A LED which is on or off means the CPU is idle. I am personally quite convinced that they chose to do it this way because the way you describe it – the obvious way – did not look cool enough.
- k2enemy 2y agoThe connection machine had several modes for the front lights. The one most familiar is "random and pleasing" and the code can be found here: https://trmm.net/CM-2/ https://trmm.net/CM-2/ Reference: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Thinking-Machines#comment-194568 https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Thinking-Machines#comment-1...
- aryehof 2y agoMany, many years ago, I saw a copy of Das Blinkenlights delivered on a sheet of paper with the documentation of a brand new S/32 IBM system. Certainly a highlight of my IT career!
- bitwize 2y agoActual German would be something like "die Blinkenlichten". "Blinkenlichten" was the form used in the original faux-German sign from which "blinkenlights" is said to derive. "Blinkenlights" is used in a faux-English sign that hung in some German computer installations: "Please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights." See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/blinkenlights.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/blinkenlights.html
- bipson 2y agoDie Blinklichter, if anything.
- LysPJ 2y agoThis story reminded me of the "BeBox" [0] PowerPC computer from the 1990's, which had Blinkenlights on its front bezel. (It ran the very cool "BeOS" operating system[1], which was eventually ported to Mac, then x86.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
- lproven 2y agoAnd a FOSS re-implementation of which is still alive and in active development. The project recently released beta 5 -- it's very nearly ready for version 1.0 and now runs GNOME Epiphany, Firefox, LibreOffice and more. https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/09/testing_haiku_beta_5/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/09/testing_haiku_beta_5/
- deltarholamda 2y agoThat you felt the need to explain these makes me feel really, really old. (And you did need to explain it; it's practically Elder Lore at this point.) It's like explaining to young people that we used to have to pay per message for SMS, or that only one person could be on the Internet at a time at your house. Now if you'll excuse me, I see some suspicious looking clouds I need to go yell at.
- endemic 2y agoThe BeBox is my holy grail of retrocomputing! Had to settle for a partition on my x86 machine. Loved BeOS back in the day.
- dvh 2y agoI like the KISS implementation of the ascii2dec function ;)
- boznz 2y agoThe retro 1970's coding was thrown in for authenticity.
- unwind 2y agoI liked how this project used "reverse mount LEDs" [1] which are perhaps not known to everyone. It means that instead of being mounted to a PCB and having the light shine "up" from the board, it instead shines down between the solder points, and you arrange for the PCB to have a hole there. It means all the components are on one side, but the light is emitted on the back which can be clean and/or have cool silkscreens etc. Nice! [1]: http://www.kingbrightusa.com/category.asp?catalog_name=LED&category_name=KCReverse+Mount+SMD+LED&Page=1 http://www.kingbrightusa.com/category.asp?catalog_name=LED&c...
- mewse-hn 2y agoMechanical keyboards have moved this direction (lighting on the back of the pcb, through a hole) so that the LEDs don't physically interfere with the hot-swappable key switches.
- jsvaughan 2y agoYou could perhaps make it play a subtle background sound like the noise WOPR makes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vWTzs_bp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vWTzs_bp4
- NKosmatos 2y agoI read this phrase: "I had almost 200 really crappy PIC16F1782 chips" and remembered my university days when we were programming the PIC16C84 and thought that this was a very good chip (at the time) :-)
- zokier 2y ago> Yes, I remembered now, I had almost 200 really crappy PIC16F1782 chips, left over from an update for one of my clients > First problem there are not enough GPIO pins on the 28-pin PIC to drive 128 LED’s, plus an address line, plus a serial receive pin, minimum GPIO’s for that is 24 (16×8 LED scan matrix)+4(address)+1(RXD) = 29. A simple solution is to add two 74HC595 shift registers to increase the outputs by 16 at the expense of 4 pins to control them. Wouldn't the simple solution be just to split the matrix in half and throw second PIC in there? Or just make 1U panels instad of 2U? Also the PIC is rated to sink/source 25 mA so you could have skipped the led driver transistors, making the boards even simpler.
- zokier 2y agoAnother note for simplification, you could use the builtin i2c peripheral and give each octet of leds its own address. You got 64 octets in total, which conveniently fits into 7 bit i2c address space. That should make the communication trivial to handle. Also RPI has builtin i2c, so you don't need usb adapter for it.
- helf 2y ago[dead]
- f1shy 2y ago>> unsigned char ascii2dec( unsigned char data) // expecting a hexedecimal num 0..F anything else returns 0 { if(data=='0') return 0; if(data=='1') return 1; if(data=='2') return 2; if(data=='3') return 3; if(data=='4') return 4; if(data=='5') return 5; if(data=='6') return 6; if(data=='7') return 7; if(data=='8') return 8; if(data=='9') return 9; if(data=='A') return 10; if(data=='B') return 11; if(data=='C') return 12; if(data=='D') return 13; if(data=='E') return 14; if(data=='F') return 15; if(data=='a') return 10; if(data=='b') return 11; if(data=='c') return 12; if(data=='d') return 13; if(data=='e') return 14; if(data=='f') return 15; return 0; // default/error } I could probably think about a little bit shorter function for that ;)
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoAlso the default case returns 0, same as data==‘0’. Good luck figuring out if there was an error.
- boznz 2y agoBoz here and guilty on all charges. There are plenty of errors if you look hard when sober. There's professional grade coding, then there is coding for hobby projects which blink LED's, when you're drinking beers and listening to rock music in a big shed with a mate. On another note, somebody asked me to make 30 panels using an RP2040 which I will put up on my site when ready, price will actually be less due to qty. as a side note he did want me to use the RP2350 but nobody has any in stock yet.
- f1shy 2y agoI said that tongue in cheek. I’m unable to pull the project you did. A brain fart happens to anybody.
- halyconWays 2y agoI'd love to see a design that uses a dirt-cheap uC, because the PIC16F1782 chips he had laying around are $2.50 each on Mouser! Edit: Tried to buy these (either PCBs, the BOM, or ideally fully assembled boards) and holy shit I've never seen a worse website than oshwlab/easyeda. So far: clicked 'purchase parts,' had to sign up, captcha was at max strength and had to agonizingly select slowly fading in cards over four times; clicked to send code; code took a while to get here and captcha expired; entered code but it had ambiguous "i" vs. "l" vs. "1" and I entered the wrong one; repeat captcha, this time only two pages of slowly fading cards; click to send code again; enter code; captcha expired; enter captcha again, enter code again; told I already have an account (I do??); go to forgot password; solve another long captcha; click to send code; captcha expired; enter code and captcha; password reset; get taken to generic landing page; go back to main site and click 'purchase parts' again; says I'm not logged in. log in again; taken to generic landing page; go back to main site and click 'purchase parts'; page loads...takes me to "lcsc" and tells me to make an account. JFC.
- boznz 2y agoI agree, it shouldn't be that hard. Ironically I keep using EasyEDA over the other CAD programs as it is quite intuitive to use and, if you use the LCSC stock parts, it has a 1-click button to order the assembled board from JLPCB. A simple "re-order link" for JLPCB I could have given out would have been too easy I guess! I have just added a link on the project webpage with the Gerber/pick and place files zipped up and any good PCB shop should be able to manufacture a board from this. $2.50 is a bit steep, I guess Microchip are probably running down this older chip and have far better 28-pin SOIC PIC16F's starting at $0.70, any PIC16F/18F should run the code with a few tweaks. My current uP of choice is the RP2040 and I will put out a design using that when my normal work quietens down a bit.
- halyconWays 2y agoI had better luck going to jlcpcb.com and uploading the files. I did modify the BOM for U5 but they didn't have any in stock, so I ended up getting them from mouser and will hand-solder those. I'm super excited for the project, I've wanted something like this for a long time...though the next step would be functional switches!