Like so many of us, [aforsberg] found themselves fascinated with the WOPR computer from WarGames — something about all those blinking LEDs must speak to nerds on some subconscious level. But rather than admire the light show from afar, they decided to recreate it at a scale suitable for a 1U server rack.
So what goes into this WOPR display? In this case, the recipe simply calls for three MAX7219 dot matrix LED modules and a Raspberry Pi Pico, although you could swap that out for your favorite microcontroller if you wish. You should probably stick with something that at least runs MicroPython though, or else you won’t be able to use the included Python code to mimic the light patterns seen in the film.
What we like most about this project is how simple and inexpensive it is to recreate. There’s no custom PCB, and all the parts are mass produced enough that the economies of scale have made them comically cheap. Even at Amazon prices, you’re looking at around $50 USD in parts, and quite a bit less if you’ve got the patience to order everything through AliExpress.
Critics will note that, in its current state, this display just shows gibberish (admittedly stylish gibberish, but still). But as we’ve seen with similar projects, that’s simply a matter of software.
Add a little more to your power bill.
FTFY, otherwise great article /s
I doubt someone running a server rack will notice the impact of a few extra LEDs.
Next I need a little IMSAI 8080 system. Maybe call up the WOPR with an acoustic coupler.
https://youtu.be/VBEgPC2zSLc?si=NufiWIcgijtQ5yX4
I’m not familiar how it works. But seems like a fun project.
Just so happens I have an IMSAI and an Altair in my collection!
https://tenor.com/fr/view/airplane-ii-beeping-and-blinking-and-flashing-shatner-william-shatner-acting-gif-18112702
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1aoicwx/playing_snake_on_etherlighting_switch/?rdt=59966
When it’s not playing games it does have a really good practical purpose.
Nice addition, but it would be even better if these were blinkenlights! Perhaps it could be extended with some network connectivity communicating with a daemon running on every node in the network so that things like disk and network activity (perhaps of VMs?) can be displayed.
The whole thing about blinkenlights is that they meant nothing, though!
It would be nice to add a switch to make it display something useful. Error state and loading etc. Using the WOPR effect as a sort of screensaver. Maybe have it play tic-tac-toe, against itself, when you turn it off. Making an alias for tictactoe number of players zero instead of shutdown.
It would be pretty easy to have an ESP8266/ESP32 to drive it instead, and use MQTT to get any error messages to display.
You could also ditch the microcontroller entirely, since you’ve got a server sitting right there. The max7219s that drive those LEDs have a really simple 5v serial interface, so if the server has 5v serial or gpio (not unheard of in the server world) you could plug it straight in. At most you’d probably need an rs232-to-5v or usb-to-uart bridge.
Then you could even write the code to run it in macro-python if you so desired.
Exactly. F.e. this display could be used to show rectangular 2D barcodes like long DataMatrix or whatever and constantly show, say, log tail that could be read with smartphone. 2D barcode could encode much more text than display showing letters, and you could get few lines of log right from that nice server front panel. Without smartphone it would be percieved like nice changing pattern, and with smartphone it will show useful data.
Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?
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It’d be a neat addition to have Conway’s Game of Life going across the LEDs. Could take in operations as types of patterns or constructs. Recurring operations could make different oscillators.
Now that would be pretty cool.
In my hackerspace we have an array of flipdots on an RPi and one of the things it displays at random intervals is game of life, along with rotating wireframe cubes, and silly messages.
This is EXACTLY what a Home Lab mini rack needs…
This reminds me of the supercomputer in the computing center main office at Purdue back in the late 90’s. It had a huge LED panel on each unit that showed individual core activity as well as data flow between cores. Was rather mesmerizing to just stand there and watch as it ran simulations for the physics department.
Completely unrelated to the main article, but since it sounds like you were there…
I was in high school when I got a tour of that building at Purdue, so also late 90’s.
for years I’ve been trying to figure out what one of the servers/devices I remember seeing there was. My memory is it was something rather large, maybe chest freezer size, with two liquid-filled columns running up the front that had gratuitous lighting to make them look extra fancy. I feel like it either had an SGI or sun microsystems badge on it, but it’s been so long my memory is suspect. In any case I haven’t been able to find pictures of anything like it online. Does this sound at all familiar or did I dream the whole thing?
Sounds to me like one of the Connection Machine computers: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine.
Sounds like a Cray T90 maybe? https://cray-history.net/cray-history-front/fom-home/cray-t90/ . Some larger systems had two heat exchangers, each with a backlit acrylic window in the front showing the Fluorinert (not water!) bubbling through. The machine itself is a large sarcophagus that would have been nearby.
The simplest implementation is Bigclive’s “supercomputer” PCB. Just a bunch of blinking LED’s in parallel, manufacturing tolerances mean they start blinking at the same rate but soon diverge and go out of sync in wonderful stochastic chaos. No MCU in sight, though I guess each LED has its own tiny IC.
This is the way. Gotta mind the initial power surges though
true, perhaps split the board in half and add a half cycle delay to half of it?
I have the hexagonal version of this sat above my PC. Yes it takes a couple of minutes to get going but it produces a great effect.
Absolute bugger to solder it though, 200+ LEDs. I did it in a few stints as I quickly got bored.
I love it. It would go well with my WOPR board.
https://hackaday.io/project/188198-wargames-wopr-prop-pcb