This is the A-head
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Chapter 8, How to Hack a Building-Size Display
Software Setup Instructions
There are two versions of the software that you can run depending on
which size system you have built. If you're building the home or desktop
system, go to the
Small-scale software
section. If you're building the large
building-size system, go to the
Large-scale software
section.
Large-scale software
Three computers are used to control the building-size Blinkenlights system.
Although it would have been possible to put it all in one system, the CCC
decided to separate the modules (control, playback, telephone interactiv-
ity) in order to allow distributed development and operation. Since the
modules communicate using standard network protocols, you can run all
of the software on a single machine. Control of the system is from either
an email interface or from a GSM mobile phone. This flow of data can be
seen in
Figure 8-23
.
Download the software from
http://www.blinkenlights.de/blinkentools.
en.html and install it according to the included files. The site also includes a
software simulator to allow you to design and preview animations without
having to first set up the hardware. You may want to play around with the
software simulator first to get a feel for how the processes interact.
The software is partitioned into three components:
· Chaos Control Center (the module name is "blccc")
· Matrix Control (the module name is "windowmatrixd")
· Telephone interface (the module name is "blinkenisdn")
These three processes use UDP to communicate.
The Chaos Control Center module reads a playlist and broadcasts frame
packets to the Matrix Control module. The "windowmatrixd" process then
extracts these frames and writes them to the 8255 digital output ports.
Figure 8-23: Software overview
email
Phone
call
Blinkenlights
movie archive
ISDN
interface
Chaos
control
center
Matrix
control