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Hardware Hacking Software Build Games Hardware

MIT Tetris Hack: Source Code Released 40

Posted by Soulskill from the make-your-town-hall-much-more-entertaining dept.
An anonymous reader writes "MIT's The Tech published an article with technical details behind the Tetris hack they did on the Green Building earlier this year. The article includes photographs of the LED modules, as well as a link to some of the source code used in the hack. The hackers have released some of the source code on GitHub, and are looking for people to contribute code that could run on the system."
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MIT Tetris Hack: Source Code Released More

MIT Tetris Hack: Source Code Released

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  • Harware is more interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ksevio ( 865461 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @04:00PM (#39861747) Homepage
    Making a game of Tetris is pretty simple. The cool part of this project is the wireless controlled LED bars they built and the design of those. I didn't see any specs for those, but that would be something interesting to see.

    • Hack hack hack? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The article is rubbish, or at least its definition of "hack" is. What did they hack? The building? The led? The led drivers? The air? The power outlet? The aluminium bars? The occupants? The genator?

      Note even "Windows" is not the correct answer IMHO.

  • Please post on it on slashdot PLEAAASE

    Just for the record guys, not /every/ piece of open source software deserves a story on slashdot, and this one in particular is one that doesn't serve many people a purpose. Hacks like these get made every week, and these guys at MIT didn't make anything particularly interesting.

  • Not the first (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anaerin ( 905998 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @04:13PM (#39861901)
    Blinkenlights [blinkenlights.net] did it first, and at higher resolution, and once they'd finished doing it in black and white, they went to Paris and did it again, in colour [blinkenlights.net]. Both systems had Tetris that was playable by phone, and would also display messages sent via SMS to the display. Oh, and both those projects were also open-source. The only interesting part of this is the wireless connectivity in the MIT system.
    • It would appear that the MIT system was stealth installed, and arrangements were made afterwards to keep the system there. From the readings on the Blinkenlights site and the wikipedia entry, Blinkenlights had prior arrangements with the building management, although both teams are admittedly short on details in this respect. If I'm reading things right, that's a major difference and an interesting one at that.

    • I doesn't seem that anyone was claiming that MIT were the first, but as long as we're looking at prior art: the first Tetris-on-a-builiding was done by electrical engineering students in Delft, the Netherlands, all the way back in 1995, as you can see on this archived webpage [archive.org]. Futhermore, students at Brown University did it in 2000 (BBC article here [bbc.co.uk]). Both prior projects, but not Blinkenlights, are mentioned in an article about the MIT project here [thecelebritycafe.com]. It seems to me that each of these projects has something t

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, but they were foreigners and the MIT guys are Americans. Go America!

  • Every image or video I've seen on this hack has 2 rooms with lights on: White lights, right edge just below the midpoint, separated horizontally by 1 and vertically by 2.

    Other rooms occasionally are illuminated, but **always** these two are on. I know this is esoteric, but what's up with that? Anything special about those rooms/windows?

  • Haha I think the marketing department at MIT is out of control.
    You are great guys, we already know. Take it easy with the press-release.

  • When are people going to realize that hacking is now a meaningless buzzword applied to anything that has thought put into it? I feel like this was a neat side project for a few electrical/software engineers, nothing was co-opted or done without permission, no hardware was repurposed, nothing was "hacked". They just got alot of commercial off the shelf stuff, put it together with a little know-how and did what engineers do every day. I know this was posted here because it's MIT, and everyone loves it to deat

    • Meh, most MIT side projects are hardly ground breaking, it doesn't stop them being interesting. The LED dance floor one group did was my favourite.

      (Also, I quibble about the requirement "without permission". You can hack something with or without permission.)

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