Comments on: Bluetooth enabled… London Bridge

By: Imant

Imant — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:18:57 +0000

Good post. Thanks)

By: bluetoother

bluetoother — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:08:48 +0000

Good news. Will beposted on my site )

By: Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:17:40 +0000

We're planning to do a presentation on this project for dorkbot london (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/) in March (date tbc) which will include all the gory technical and logistical details. We've asked the lighting supplier if we can keep some of the lights until then so we can have a subset of the bridge setup running live.
Re. #21 - we did seriously think about the possibility of our sensor boxes cable-tied to lampposts being mistaken for something sinister, but as far as we know no serious security scares ensued... We did have them put there by the City's lighting contractor to avoid getting arrested....

By: larrysanchez

larrysanchez — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:23:29 +0000

I think mike should recieve everyones kudos for this hack. It is by no- means a small scale project. Maybe people who probably havnt visited the bridge, and claim that this isn’t a hack worthy of hack a day should just STFU!! The hack is obviously a huge job, i mean i work as a lighting technician in a theatre and I couldn’t even begin to think about the logistics of getting a line of ‘chroma bar’ style led batons along the top of the tower bridge, let alone program the bluetooth to dmx conversion side of things. As with comment #22 I also believe that if you can’t do better yourself don’t bad mouth it…it just makes you look like a tosser…

By: srilyk

srilyk — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:15:07 +0000

I'd say this meets at least several of these requirements. They had a short timespan, they did the best they could with what they had, and made it work, even if not as best they could have, with a proper budget, materials, and time.

Ergo, this was a hack.

And personally, I'm a sucker for lights that you can make do things... I wish I had that remote! ^_^ (and unless you can do something bigger, or better, please, shut up, think, think again, then three more times, go walk the dog - if you don't have one, find one - and THEN come back and post. Then you won't look like some of the 2nd graders at the school I teach at.)

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) :

hack

1. Originally, a quick job that produces what is
needed, but not well.

2. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece
of work that produces exactly what is needed.

3. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this
heat!"

4. To work on something (typically a program). In an
immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO."
In a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around
here?" "I hack TECO." More generally, "I hack "foo"" is
roughly equivalent to ""foo" is my major interest (or
project)". "I hack solid-state physics." See Hacking X for
Y.

5. To pull a prank on. See hacker.

6. To interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory
rather than goal-directed way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just
hacking."

7. Short for hacker.

8. See nethack.

9. (MIT) To explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam
tunnels of a large, institutional building, to the dismay of
Physical Plant workers and (since this is usually performed at
educational institutions) the Campus Police. This activity
has been found to be eerily similar to playing adventure games
such as Dungeons and Dragons and Zork. See also
vadding.

By: criminalhate

criminalhate — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:39:39 +0000

if this was done in the USA it probably would have shut down the whole city because they thought it was a terrosit act

By: Wesley

Wesley — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:06:50 +0000

1.That would be the tower bridge
2. When you speak of DMX, do you mean the USITT standard lighting protocol?

And Big ben is not a tower, its actually the biggest bell in the tower.

By: akaDruid

akaDruid — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:46:37 +0000

OK well I went and checked it out last night.

I took photos of the various installations (those that I could find).

They are in a flickr set with descriptions here: http://flickr.com/photos/akadruid/sets/51475/

I actually like the bluetooth hack idea.

But the rest of the projects I think are pretty poor. There was no effort that I could see to promote it. The official site has not been updated to show which displays actually happened so that you can go look at them. There is also no promotion in the area, a few posters explaining what was happening would have been nice for people who are visiting the area anyway.

By: Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:11:58 +0000

One man's Stupid is another's hack.
Bridges are not designed to be used as people-flow displays. Bluetooth is not designed to be used to measure traffic flow. Nobody makes a wireless bluetooth relay so one had to be built from scratch.
And if you have ever done a project on this scale in such a stupidly short timescale you would realise that there is not the time and energy to fully document every detail immediately afterwards. I don't even HAVE schematics as I did the PCBs from my head. The detailed schematics are not important anyway as it is mostly made from off-the-shelf modules that any half-competent hacker ought to be able to figure out to do in their own way.
My site does however include a detailed description of exactly how the behaviour is controlled by BT devices, such that anyone who wants to can go there and see it work for themselves.
So whilst some may be happily entertained by doll-rectal toothbrush activities, others might like the opportunity to go play with a famous landmark with some inside knowledge of how it works and how they can control its behaviour.

By: bob t

bob t — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:14:23 +0000

Technically, they hacked a bridge with computers, bluetooth recievers and dmx hardware, not to mention lots of L.E.D’s. So stop being so critical, I would count this as a hack. Mike also said that he had not put the ‘hackiness’ related stuff on his site yet…mr jones, maybe you should read a comment through first to aviod making yourself look stupid, but then if you come from a family where your sister sticks a toothbrush up a dolls arse its given..

By: mr jones

mr jones — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:54:01 +0000

Hackiness?? HACKINESS!?!?!

Okay look....if you take a toaster and meld it together with a skateboard, THAT is a hack! IF you take a computer and combine it with a set of hot rollers...THAT IS ALSO A HACK!! but there is NOTHING~~~I REPEAT....NOTHING even remotely "Hacki" about installing lights on a bridge....even if blue tooth turns em on....HOW does the bluetooth turn them on?????

WE HAVE NO IDEA!!!!!! WHY????

BECAUSE NOBODY POSTED ANY SCHEMATICS, DIAGRAMS, SCRIBBLE ON A NAPKIN...NOTHING!!!!

My little sister stuck a toothbrush up her dolls butt....THAT was more of a hack than this!!!!

I am SOOOO very disappointed that this "HACKI" BS made it onto this site......I dont care what you post in the future because I AM SO DISAPPOINTED IN HACKADAY for calling this a hack I SIMPLY WONT BE JOINING YOU PEOPLE ANYMORE....

Ohhhhh!! Somebody put lights on a bridge?!?! LET ME SEE!!!!

gimme a break. this is STUPID!!!!!

I repeat.....

STUPID!!!!!

By: Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:48:02 +0000

Just to clear up a few things (I did the custom electronics and software for this project).
This is the first year of this event and it was done on a near-zero budget to get something happenning in the hope of making it a more regular event with some proper funding next time. Many of the projects on the SOL website did not happen for a whole number of reasons but unfortunately they didn’t update the site, which gave a slightly misleading impression. Some things got changed/cancelled at a very late stage – we were all set to install on London bridge and then found out the access cradle was not useable. The decision to change to Tower Bridge happenned about a week before we had to start the install,and even after that it was off & then on again once DURING the install…. In fact the Tower Bridge setup works better than a London Bridge one would have as people on London bridge can see the effect themselves.
Since the start we have had a few power supply problems, but the only night we were completely dead was Sunday & we have had one of the 2 sections missing on 2 other nights.
We would certainly have liked to have had more sensors – ideally 2 at each end to get a speed and direction by the time people reach the ‘first’ end of the bridge so the speed accross the bridge can be matched better. Time, budget and availability of the RF modems simply did not allow this. All the sensor hardware & software, and the controller hardware & software was designed and built from scratch in about 2 weeks.
One major issue in using Bluetooth in this way is that you are stuck with an update rate of the order of 10 seconds due to the randomising of the response time from the detected devices. Range is also somewhat variable, so on a relatively short span like this it is not practical to get especially accurate speed data. However at less busy times it is easy to get see a very obvious response to individual bluetooth devices as you move along the bridge.
One approach I am plannning to investigate is the use of multiple bluetooth modules doing staggered, overlapping scans, as well as using RSSI data.
One good thing that has come out of this is a load of data we can sit down and look at to see what might be achievable with more time, and a budget.

I will be adding some stuff to my site, hopefully including some video, as the dynamics are what really make it work.

Regarding the ‘hackiness’, there are a couple of things not yet on my site that fall into that catagory – firstly we programmed in a number of ‘magic’ MACs for the phones of some of the people involved in the project, so they get their own special display. Also I have a ‘test’ trasmitter that lets me make it do all sorts of wizzy stuff from anywhere that is within view – this is particularly good for freaking out tourists when you
go up next to them, pull out what looks like a big TV remote and start making things happen on the bridge….
We will be doing a presentation at dorkbotlondon on this in the near future – possibly March

By: monster

monster — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:46:49 +0000

so when will the people who did this get arrested?

whoops, that wasn't a hair question

By: jake

jake — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:44:21 +0000

How about using 3 identical sensors , networking them up , tringulating the signal and pointing a laser at the poor owner ?
*come on everybody* , linch the bluetooth dude!

By: TGBM

TGBM — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:31:57 +0000

this would be neat to install on a wall next to a sidewalk… as someone with a bluetooth phone walks by a lighted arrow points at their phone until they exit the area… that would be fun but annoying…