The BlinkenArea is a project group of people who like to build blinking objects. Some of our projects are miniature replicas of the Blinkenlights project and other buildings used as dot matrix screens. Our members are artists, hardware hackers, software hackers or usually a combination of the above ;-).

If you want to join us for the congress, please send an e-mail to <arne@blinkenarea.org>.

BlinkenArea at 32C3

Website	http://www.blinkenarea.org/
Contact	E-Mail: arne@blinkenarea.org Jabber: ArneRossius@jabber.ccc.de DECT (during 32C3): 2082
Description	The BlinkenArea will show many blinking objects made with lots and lots of LEDs. There will also be a soldering workshop for everyone from beginners to professionals. We will sell electronics construction kits for different projects that can be used for the workshop. The workshop will take place all day, every day, whenever there is someone available at the BlinkenArea to answer any questions you might have.
Members	ArneRossius, ST, Sandra
Projects	create project
Self-organized Sessions	create self-organized session
Subassembly of	HardwareHackingArea
Tags	soldering, workshop, led, electronics, hardware hacking
Registered on	28 November 2015 12:56:33
Location for self-organized sessions	yes
Self-organized session notes	All-day soldering workshop. Extra space required for workshop is one round table and at least 6 chairs.
	Other assemblies by tags... 3d printing android archlinux austria berlin cacert crypto digital rights electronics hackerspace hacking hardware hardware hacking led linux makerspace music regensburg reverse engineering rfid sdr security soldering university
Location	Note: The location on the map does not represent a reservation of a location and might not represent the actual place, where a assembly can be found. The place can be changed within the form of the assembly by anyone. It will be updated by the assembly itself on day 0 or day 1 as soon as the actual location is known.
Orga contact	arne@blinkenarea.org
Brings	Many relatively small blinking objects, soldering equipment for several places.
Character of assembly	place to show and meet
Seats needed	4
Extra seats	6
Assembly specification	want quiet place, loud place ok, want sit public, want low light, want taking pictures allowed
Planning notes	Some space in main hardware hacking area would be best. Please, /please/ provide some rectangular tables to show projects on (member seating on one side, visitors passing/standing on other side). Ideally 2 rectangular tables for projects and 1 rectangular table for each member (we'll bring more things than just a laptop), plus a (large, round) table for soldering workshop, plus plenty of chairs.
past congress review	Very happy with the space we got last year, however some information in advance on where we should set up would be appreciated. The soldering workshop was very busy, often with people waiting and/or watching, so some free space around the workshop table is helpful (if possible, I know space is very limited).

The BlinkenArea will show many small blinking objects at the congress and also sell construction kits for some of them. If you like, you can solder your kit during the congress in our all-day, every-day soldering workshops. Everyone from a complete novice (including children) to a seasoned soldering expert is welcome. We're not yet sure how many soldering irons will be available, so if you have your own soldering iron, please bring it with you. A loan of your soldering iron for other participants of the workshop to use would be greatly appreciated.

General Information on Kits and BlinkenMovies

BlinkenMovies (animations for BlinkenArea projects) can be created with Blimp or with your own programs and scripts (follow the links to the file formats below for details on the file structure). MCUF streams can be generated from existing BlinkenMovies with "BlinkenSend" from the BlinkenLib suite of console tools. MCUF streams are usually sent via UDP, you can output them to a serial port with "BlinkenOutput", also part of BlinkenLib.

The LED matrix kits use the BlinkenPlus firmware. This firmware supports playing animations from an MMC, SD or SDHC card formatted with FAT16 or FAT32 (the FAT12 filesystem on cards up to 32 MB is not supported). In addition, an MCUF stream can be fed to the UART, which is displayed when no SD card is inserted. The firmware also outputs an MCUF stream of all displayed frames (regardless of their source, including error messages) to the UART, which can be fed into other projects (if they have the same resolution).

Supported file formats on the SD card:

BIN - binary, no grayscales (8 colors for RGB projects).
BBM - Binary BlinkenMovie, up to 256 grayscales (16 Mi colors for RGB projects), but BlinkenPlus will convert to 8 grayscales (512 colors) before displaying.
BLM - BlinkenLights Movie, simple ASCII text files, no grayscales (8 colors for RGB projects).
BML - Blinkenlights Markup Language, XML-based, up to 256 grayscales (16 Mi colors for RGB projects), but BlinkenPlus will convert to 8 grayscales (512 colors) before displaying.

Have a look at the kit instructions on where to place the files on the SD card, as the location varies with each kit. This also means that you can use the same SD card for different kits in turn without having to move or delete files.

BlinkenArea Kits

A list of kits available at 32C3 will be added here soon. Every kit contains all needed parts, the PCB and printed instructions. You can solder your kit at the BlinkenArea if you like.