166
This is the A-head
Part II: More Hacking Techniques
The telephone interface process sends telephone line state information
(ONHOOK, OFFHOOK) and event information (DTMF keys pressed)
for each line to the Chaos Control Center. This module was designed for
an ISDN interface, and so will require some hacking to support a different
interface. Whenever the telephone interface detects an OFFHOOK event
(an incoming call is detected and answered), it starts the Pong game. When
the telephone interface detects an ONHOOK event (the calling party hangs
up the phone), the system returns to the playlist movies.
Since all of the processes will be run on a single machine, you will need to
change all the target addresses to 127.0.0.1 so that everything runs locally.
Locate one animation and run it. Watch the building display to make sure
that everything is wired properly. You may need to correct wiring mistakes
at the interconnect boards. Try a few of the animations from the web site
and design a few of your own.
The Pong-like game was designed to
work with an ISDN phone system, but
you may be able to hack the code a bit
to make it work with a standard PSTN
system.
Small-scale software
If you have built the desktop- or home-
size version, download the mini-
Blinkenlights software from
http://
www.jalcds.de/blinkenleds/software.
php.Install this software according to
the included instructions. The soft-
ware runs under Windows and can
utilize all of the original Blinkenlights
movie files. This software is all you
will need to run the smaller version
of the system. When running, it will
look like
Figure 8-24
.
After you've wired and connected the
LED and wire mesh to the LED driv-
ers, test out the system before you
mount it.
Figure 8-24: Small-scale PC software