Created for the Disobey 2020 hacker conference in Finland, this Blade Runner inspired communications terminal isn’t just for decoration. It was part of an interactive game that required attendees to physically connect their conference badges up and “call” different characters with the functional keypad on the front of the unit.
[Purkkaviritys] was in charge of designing the 3D printed enclosure for the device, which he says takes an entire 2 kg roll of filament to print out. Unfortunately he wasn’t as involved in the electronics side of things, so we don’t have a whole lot of information about the internals beyond the fact that its powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, features a HyperPixel 4.0 display, and uses power over Ethernet so it could be easily set up at the con with just a single cable run.
The keypad is a custom input device using the Arduino Micro and Cherry MX Blue switches with 3D printed keycaps to get that chunky payphone look and feel. [Purkkaviritys] mentions that the keypad is also responsible for controlling the RGB LED strips built into the sides of the terminal, and that the Raspberry Pi toggles the status of the Caps, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock keys to select the different lighting patterns.
Naturally we’d like to see more info on how this beauty was put together, but given that it was built for such a specific purpose, it’s not like you’d really need to duplicate the original configuration anyway. Thanks to [Purkkaviritys] you have the STL files to print off our own copy of the gloriously cyberpunk enclosure, all you’ve got to do now is figure out how to make video calls with it.
Payphone aesthetic is fantastic here. I think the kiosk format for conference challenges is an excellent one because it gets the teams who are working on challenges out in the open, and gives people who aren’t working on challenges a chance to spectate.
Lol@ purkkaviritys :D
That’s “rigged together with chewing gum” in finnish, more or less :)
A McGuyverism.
“…like AT&T, but even more incompetent…”
Is that even possible?
Don’t give AT&T any ideas…
Someone has never had the (dis)pleasure of working with CenturyTel…
“steven says:
October 1, 2020 at 8:38 am”
a.k.a. John Oliver
I shut off the video before anything interesting occurred.
(Yawn!)