Blinkenlights Chaos Control Center
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THIS (blccc-1.999) IS A SNAPSHOT ONLY!!

There are a few known bugs but in general blccc works fine. More
documentation is certainly needed. A more official release will
follow soon.
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If you have no clue what Blinkenlights is, take a look at
http://www.blinkenlights.de/ first.

This is a rewrite of the master control program for Blinkenlights. Our
first implementation used to be a GTK+ application that allowed
previewing of movies and run-time modification of the playlist using a
graphical user interface. It turned out that we need a way to control
the Blinkenlights remotely, so this new implementation runs as a
daemon controllable via telnet connections. We started to use this
software for the Blinkenlights installation at the end of September
2001.

Some parts of the code could definitely be improved but keep in mind
that this software evolved over time since we kept on adding new
features while the Blinkenlights installation was already running
every night from dusk till dawn. Actually we kept the software running
all the time and just switched off power from the relais during the
days. So this software has prooven to work reliable over a couple of
months.


How to compile:

You need to have blib-1.1.x installed. A simple

  ./configure; make; make install

should do the trick. You may have to adjust your PKG_CONFIG_PATH
environment variable so that blib.pc is found.


How to use:

Have a look at the examples directory. There's a default config and a
minimal set of resources, enough to make blccc work. Change to the
directory and start it:

 blccc config.xml

blccc will read the config file and start with parameters given
there. It now sends UDP packets to the configured recipients (there
can be more than one recipient). You can connect to blccc using
telnet. It listens on port 2323 on the local interface (and only on
the local interface, you cannot login remotely).  Type 'telnet
localhost 2323' and it should welcome you. Try the 'help' command to
get an idea of what is possible. You can use netcat (nc) to send
commands to blccc so that you can control the installation from
scripts or cronjobs.

Now it's time to start blinkensim to visualize the stream of UDP 
packets:

 blinkensim


blccc can be configured to communicate with a blinkenisdn daemon (not
part of this package). Applications, which are basically BModules, can
be bound to phone numbers.  The example config shows different
setups. A typical setup is to use BlDispatch.  If the line goes
off-hook, the pong game is started. The game is controlled thru dial
tones. The special sequence *<digits># can be bound to other games,
movies or any other BModule you'd like to use. As soon as all
telephone lines are on-hook again, blccc continues to play movies from
the playlist.


Have Blinkenfun,
	Sven  <sven@gimp.org>
