Electromagnetic Fie--? oh I get it!
I haven't been camping before and that may surprise you, but what may shock you more is that I even own a two-man tent, a camping stove and sleeping bags, but still I had never been camping. There wasn't any particular reason behind why not, perhaps it was a cumulation of things; such as lack of money or no particular interest in going to a location.
However, I learned about Electromagnetic Field and the Camping Festival sometime during 2013 / 2014 and that it happens every two years, the last being 2012. This gave me the kick I needed to make the move to camping! Thanks to Go Outdoors and CPC for practically everything I needed in addition to what I already had.
With the last EMFCamp occuring in 2012, last year it was felt that another event needed to occur as a stop-gap and that was EMW, Electromagnetic Wave (are you seeing the trend yet?) which was hosted on a converted east German fishing vessel, the Motorschiff Stubnitz in London which also hosted speedy internet access for attendees and a series of talks and workshops.
The first question that's usually on everyones mind when it is mentioned, is "What happens at/is EMFCamp?" , and that's where explaining it in a way that does it justice becomes tricky, so to take a quote from the EMF website as a starting point:
In August 2014 over a thousand people descended on an internet-connected field for three days of talks, performances, and workshops covering everything from blacksmithing to biometrics, chiptunes to computer security, high altitude ballooning to lockpicking, origami to democracy, and online privacy to knitting.
We also equipped the field with fast internet, power to the tent, good beer, and amazing installations.
It's true! With mains power to your tent (even the humble(?) two-man) with the potential of wired networking (which I think was approximately 400Mbps symmetric), the variety of topics mentioned are presented over various attraction areas at EMFCamp, these are, but not limited to:
- Villages
- Presentations / Performances
- Workshops
- (Interactive) Exhibit/Stalls
What's on?
Villages may seem like an unusual concept but they work well in practice. A village is a group of like minded individuals whom camp together, this year saw Hack/Maker spaces forming villages and demonstrating their projects from the camp such as an awesome wood lathe, an International Space Station tracker and various light displays. Others were representing nationalities, such as the people from Holland with fresh and delicious Stroopwafels (mmm Stroopwafels...) being made directly at the camp for sale (endearingly to pay back for a camping ticket which was crowd sourced) along with other confectionary items and their village decorated in suitable bunting. There were also villages that were potentially controversial in their conception but were created with good intentions to ensure that everyone was welcome.
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Workshops were so popular, that the signups were filled up before the event started, though some of the workshops were 'drop in' sessions such as the one and a half hour ability to fashion, hammer, tinker and create your own ring - it was so popular that a couple proposed to be engaged at the camping festival from the rings that were made!
A no-doubt popular workshop was also the Blacksmithing, here it was possible to get hands on with the anvils and metalwork to learn the basics for fashioning and forging your own creations out of iron. These ranged from the standard nail to something resembling a snail - unfortunately it was so fully booked there was even a queue to get into a session if there were any drop outs! Workshops were very hands-on and ranged from "Hacking the Tilda" (the EMFCamp badge) to "Off-grid solar photovoltaics hands-on workshop" and even lockpicking, which Ben and Alyson both had a go at (spoiler: Alyson was a natural at it, beware!).
The presentations and such ranged from "Bunting and Decorations" to "How to be an Effective Terrorist: fear and loathing in cyber security" and "InfraRed Communications" . You can find a full list of the talks which took place online. They're currently being archived as videos and will be available on youtube eventually.
Performances were mainly music presentations, with strong demonstrations of chiptunes and live coded techno often accompanied by colourful visuals and lasers which, if the safety was disabled on them, could set the place on fire (or at least a cigarette). There were also quizzes and demonstrations of technology, such as how well multicasting video streams can operate across the wired and wireless networks over the camp and in a presentation tent. Of course, there was also a form of laser quest!
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There were also villages/stalls/exhibits that showed off retro gaming machines (including pinball!) where someone was happily coding away on a Commodore 64 while behind them Mario Brothers was being played on an oversized NES pad. In another tent JustAddSharks were demonstrating the benefits of laser cutting with a variety of tasty wood cuts in differnet styles and sizes of laser cutter. Another tent had a Sinclair C5 along with 3D printers, demonstrating the type of goodies you may find at your local Hackspace - and some that you might not such as Nottinghack's robotic bartender which was far too popular and there were people running their own Radio Station on-site with appropriate and correct licensing to do so (to my knowledge).
I don't know why, but wherever there's hackers, there are ducks...
Aside from the fact that we weren't allowed to play in the lake, nearby people took to the air instead as a quadcopter (and higher number blade copters) had a play area in the form of an obstacle course beside Stage A - and there were many copters. In the video above you can see an overview of the camping fields and festival layout, there was however another video which became virally popular...
By Heck, it's Ben
To showcase his ZX Spectrum portable build, Ben Heck and Alyson came along to EMFCamp to perform a talk on the Friday which went into detail about the build and also film an episode on the saturday for the EMFCamp Extreme Camping Chair 150th episode. The talk went down really well and Ben was surprised that he was free to go into technical detail about the construction of the circuitry on the device which he wasn't used to at events! After the talk he was practically mobbed as the crowd gathered to check on the build for themselves.
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It also wouldn't make sense for Ben to visit without trying some typical british cuisine, one of the first tasks on Ben's itinerary was to find a can of Spam and eat it, which he managed to do thanks to one of the villages at the camps BBQ. Then it was into the retro' games tent to play Alyson at Super Streetfighter 2 along with some pinball. Just don't ask him about my 58million score on Indiana Jones...
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Alright 'Mate'...
I did take a camping stove to EMFCamp, but truth be told I didn't cook a sausage, or bacon, or eggs, in fact it was not used at all. Thanks to the Hax0rz of the Roses village food was mainly served up by Hackspace Manchester. Though on occasion I missed out because I was busy; when I was otherwise hungry or thirsty there was a collection of food and drink trailers along with the camp's very own bar: The Robot Arms.
The Robot Arms sold various real ales which were different depending on choice and stock levels, and of course they stocked Club Mate, a staple, caffeinated, tea based drink that's very popular amongst Hackspaces (mainly in the rest of Europe but quickly spreading elsewhere).
For EMF there was a subtley different slant on the drink, a Pomegranate flavoured one - since having a cold drink was a bit rare (the fridges at the villages mainly contained food for cooking) it was the best choice for a non-alcoholic drink (aside from the coffee stand which sold an interesting concoction called "Acid Rain").
The Badge
There are conferences, events and talks where you get a badge and it can be mundane. A piece of card with your name on, you draw on it, attach stickers. There is a growing trend (and almost a competition), however, amongst the more technical conferences (such as DEFCON) to have the best and most interesting badge possible. This is effectively a circuit board based around a micro-controller that can be used as a development kit, if it isn't a contained entity of itself. Some conferences have intended challenges on the board which means you have to debug and/or crack security algorithms to get a prize or just bragging rights.
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The EMFCamp Badge, the Tilda MKe is based on the Arduino Due, running an ARM based Atmel ATSAM3X8E Cortex M3 with practically all of the pins broken out to connectors on the board or hooked into devices. The devices ranged from a Ciseco SRF 868Mhz RF Transceiver radio, an LCD display to a 3 axis accelerometer with gyro and a joystick with buttons and infra-red with RGB LEDs, a speaker and pads for wearable technology hook-up. The badge went through many versions with the original design having an e-ink display, unfortunately while this was great for persistence of image its refresh wasn't so great, it had to be cut out eventually for budget reasons. This badge is feature full and packed with awesome!
When you got your badge, the intention was that you register it on the scheduling website once it retrieved an ID and then you can select your favourite talks to attend to and be notified on your badge when they're happening. You could also check what the weather was like and see the list of sponsors, along with playing a quick game of Tetris or Snake. Or you could just hack on the badge, the code is freely available on github.
Unfortunately for the event, all did not go smoothly with the badges - due to sponsors dropping out, late/non-existant sponsorship payment and a rare occasion of a problem with the production of the badges. The badges arrived late and this meant that the software was also developed late and so on the day it didn't operate as it should (there's an entire talk dedicated to what happened with the badges). However, mild hilarity ensued when someone found that they could send out messages to all of the badges and people received on screen the message "I'm lonely and I don't work properly" or something to that effect.
Still, it's a fantastic momento with software that has since been fixed (or is at least on its way to being) and the next badge for EMFCamp 2016 should use the same codebase/processor which means things should be better prepared. I'm using mine as a learning experience in how to use a JTAG programmer with the ARM hardware.
There's also a competition on at the moment for the person who can do the most interesting thing with the badge; since it can be programmed with the Arduino IDE that makes it a lot easier, the winner gets their next two tickets to EMF events for free!
If you'd like to see more photographs from EMFCamp, please see the imgur album, Flickr group or Memories page.
I would definitely go again, the next one should be in 2016, are you going?
