Chaos Computer Club - recent events feed

Feast your eyes on generative art, executable animations, music, art, and more. Come and see what the people of EMF and the demoscene have released at this year's Field-FX, as we round-up last night's demoparty and give cheers for the entries that the audience voted the best! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/343-field-fx-awards-ceremony

The ceremony in which we close the festival. Goodbye! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/279-closing-ceremony

What do your phone, the night sky, and the Big Bang have in common? They all involve light, in one form or another. In this talk, we will follow light across the Universe and back in time, towards the Big Bang. We begin with EMF in everyday life - the electromagnetic waves around us - then move out to the light we receive from stars and galaxies, and finally reach the Cosmic Microwave Background - the oldest light we can see, an afterglow from the early Universe. This ancient signal shows us what the cosmos was like nearly 14 billion years ago, and it also points to one of the biggest mysteries in modern science: most of the matter in the Universe is dark - invisible to us - and we still do not know what it is. Without dark matter, there would be no galaxies, no stars, and no us. To uncover these hidden pieces, physicists use CERN's Large Hadron Collider to smash particles together and recreate the extreme conditions of the early Universe. From the EMF around us to the Big Bang, this is a story about light, matter, and our search for the dark, hidden pieces that dominate the Universe. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/239-the-universe-in-electromagnetic-light

It turns out that you can't just say anything on the internet. Things that would be illegal to put in print are also illegal to publish online. We'll be going on a short journey through a real world case of this, from the process of starting a claim to turning up in the high court and what happens next. It'll be a cautionary story covering a range of things you should absolutely not do and what happens when you do them anyway, along with the three words you never want to read in a judicial decision. The presenter is not a lawyer. This will not be legal advice. But in the unlikely event that you end up on either side of a similar situation at some point, it'll give you some insight into how things can go and maybe help you decide what to do next. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/305-a-practical-guide-to-internet-defamation-or

What connects quiz-show winners, on-line poker cheaters and cyber attacks on Taiwanese national ID cards? In this talk I’ll present a historical overview of randomness failures. Why are random number generators so often at the root of cyber-security problems and why are they so damn difficult to implement in hardware? I will go over several incidents of security failures caused by bad randomness in the last few decades, and from each incident we will try to learn what not to do. Finally, after eliminating all the wrong ways of generating randomness, possibly we’ll be left with the correct one. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/59-how-not-to-make-a-random-number-generator

Flexible circuit boards (flexible PCBs) are pretty cool: they are lightweight, can fold into small spaces, are bendable, and can be designed to stretch. You might have seen one inside a digital camera, a wearable, or connecting a screen to another board in a laptop or smartphone. Or you might have had one made for an electronics project. But have you ever made one yourself? Unlike conventional, rigid PCBs, chances are you haven’t, for a number of reasons. But it doesn’t have to be this way: this talk will tell you how (and how not to) DIY your own flexible PCBs for your next electronics project. This talk is part of an ongoing project on breaking flexible electronics fabrication out of research labs and specialised manufacturing facilities, and into the hands of makers, hackers, artists, and others. You will learn about materials and techniques for making flexible electronics, weird and wonderful uses for flexible PCBs, and hear about the results of DIY flexible PCB workshops in four different countries and counting. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/235-flexible-pcbs-for-you-and-for-me

Voice assistants are getting easier to deploy, but they’re still generic. This talk follows my attempt to build a mostly-local Home Assistant voice system that not only controls the house, but has a personality. We’ll explore the trade-offs between local and cloud services, improving recognition for regional accents, creating custom Piper voices, and adding character to an assistant that would otherwise sound like every other synthetic voice. Along the way we’ll discover where cloud services are still better, where local solutions shine, and why a mildly judgemental anime tsundere can be more enjoyable to live with than a perfectly efficient assistant. Hmpf. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/88-building-a-mostly-local-mildly-judgemental-home-assistant

Robin Ince is a multi award winning comedian, author, broadcaster, bibliomaniac and a populariser of scientific ideas. He is perhaps best known as the former co-host and co-creator of the Sony Gold Award winning BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. As a stand up Robin has toured the world and as an author he has written four acclaimed books, including Bibliomaniac, which earned him the prestigious Booksellers Association Author of the Year award. His fifth, Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, was published in May 2025. He co-created the Cosmic Shambles Network and created the groundbreaking science variety night Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People which has been adapted worldwide. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/296-why-the-monkey-escaped-the-cage

An open source lock-picking robot, which counterintuitively is designed to make locks more secure. Made as an alternative to master keys, which are used widely (for example, on almost every suitcase) and have large inherent security issues. The lockpicking robot uses a series of wires which push through a custom 3D-printed steel key blank to spoof the correct key bitting. github.com/etinaude/unlocked 🔒➡️🔑🤖➡️🔓 Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/56-lock-picking-robot

In my quest for Weird Art, long have I wanted to build a digital slit-scan camera. The idea was to take a linear CCD, a load of RAM, and glue them together with an FPGA. But as I pursued the project, things went in a strange new direction, and I ended up creating something different, something so fascinatingly odd that it changed the way I think about time and space. It all got quite philosophical. Egotistically I named the project after my online alias, and then kept it secret for the best part of a decade. In this talk, all shall be revealed... Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/205-the-xelatype-a-journey-through-time-and-space

What could other worlds look like? Exoplanetology — the study of planets orbiting stars other than our sun — is rapidly progressing, and researchers are discovering increasing numbers of planets. Little is known about these distant worlds — perhaps their mass, or their radius, but conditions on the surface are still left somewhat to our imagination. The nearest star to the Earth after the Sun is Proxima Centauri, a mere four light years away, and we now know it too hosts a planet. Much smaller and redder than our Sun, Proxima emits most of its light in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, rather than the visible range. Life on Earth has evolved to make the most of the Sun’s energy — but how would life have evolved on a planet with a very different kind of light available? Our project explores this idea using Kodak Aerochrome, a false-colour infrared film. Sensitive to light extending into the infrared regime, where foliage reflects strongly, it produces images that mimic the red hued plant life that we might find on other planets. Through this series of photographs we explore the story of an astronaut visiting one of these distant worlds. See the exhibition of photographs in the Robot Arms and on Sunday from 1pm in the Arts tent. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/435-life-on-a-pale-red-dot

Members of the EMF infrastructure teams will talk about how we made the event happen this year, with all the important statistics. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/124-infrastructure-review

A deep dive into the process of designing and implementing a fully custom-built wearable video screen, which was used on a 50-date international arena concert tour by a well-known musical artist in 2025 and 2026. Details of all aspects will be explored, from initial concept design with the artist's creative and tour production teams, technical electronic and mechanical aspects, integration of the electronics into the costume, as well as the practicalities of building reliable & robust hardware on a very short timescale. And of course the safety aspects of making a body-worn system capable of using over 250 watts of power. This was a commercial project, and is planned to be a joint presentation by myself (freelance electronics consultant) for the technical aspects, and my client (design studio) talking about production liaison, logistics and final hardware integration (sewing & wiring!). Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/37-dont-set-fire-to-the-singer-making-a-video-jacket

Levitation is a popular trope of magical media, but are we actually able to defy gravity and suspend things in the air? The short answer is yes. And the longer answer is we have lots of different ways. Using magnets, sound, light, and more we’ve levitated objects from single cells to entire passenger trains. We’ll go over the basic principles underpinning each approach, and consider their benefits and drawbacks, and we’ll also cover why you should care - because making stuff levitate can be useful for reasons you might not think, like making better drugs, creating holograms or improving transport networks between cities. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/218-levitation-from-hovercrafts-to-holograms

For over 100 years now, being able to take an image of brain activity has been a really useful approach to understanding how brains work. But, more recently, we’ve learnt how to change brain states. Non-invasive Brain Stimulation (NiBS) does just that; temporarily interfere with normal brain activation without having to anaesthetise, cut, drill or otherwise violate the skull! The plan for this talk is to tell you a bit about brains and what we can learn from stimulating them using electromagnets and weak electric currents. As well as some sophisticated science, this approach has also seen some crazy claims about what brain stimulation can do. To separate the signal from the noise, open science has had a massive role to play. The lab that I co-lead has used open science approaches to explore brain activity using NiBS and found… not much. But, by using an open science approach, and systematically experimenting using NiBS, the how and why of ‘not much’ can be particularly useful and hopefully interesting. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/79-stimulating-brains-without-touching-them-a-story-of-magnets

Machine knitting has grown in use and popularity over the past decade as domestic knitting machines have been rescued from dusty attics. Computerised knitting machines are now within reach for significantly less money than their older, more established industrial ancestors. But what makes an industrial knitting machine different from one you could have at home? What does it mean for it to be computerised? What is the difference between a ‘fully fashioned garment’ versus a ‘complete garment’? This talk will start with the fundamentals of how to knit a jumper and will walk through the industrial manufacturing history of knitting frames and machines, highlighting the mechanical engineering innovations that have allowed machines to move closer to replicating the agility of human hands knitting yarn. Did a robot knit your jumper? Probably not, but it is exciting to see how this technology is progressing and what it is enabling. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/203-did-a-robot-knit-your-jumper

Is it still your car? With a modern car running between 100 and 150 small computers - ECUs - the question is hard to answer. In 2015 some hackers took control together with a baffled Wired reporter of the car he was driving, from miles away. This led to a lot more interest in those computers constantly talking to each other over CAN bus. There is a massive playground here and most people do not even know the gate is open. Maybe you already have a Bluetooth ELM-327 dongle visualising CAN data on your smartphone. That is the crack that lets you dig deeper. The next step is the Macchina M2 - which goes so much further. You get direct access to more vehicle interfaces than most hackers even know exist. I will show you SavvyCAN and Wireshark capturing live CAN traffic and we will decode what those packets are actually saying. Your own car, your own hardware, completely legal. By the end of this talk you will want to go straight to the car park and plug something in. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/57-obd-ii-obviously-broken-design-too

Come and watch me point a spectrometer at a load of things, and teach you about how light interacts with stuff. What’s a spectrometer, you ask? Well it’s a device that measures light and produces a graph of the brightness of the light at each wavelength. I inherited one last year, and this talk will mainly consist of live demos of the spectrometer, along with explanations of what we’re seeing and how it works. The talk will be accessible to almost anyone - you don't need a lot of science knowledge to be able to enjoy it! I’ll start with looking at some different light sources (incandescent bulbs, fluorescent bulbs, LEDs, sunlight, LCD displays) and then take a look at how a spectrometer works and what is inside the box. I’ll then introduce some other useful bits of kit, including a very expensive sheet of white plastic and a ‘sphere’ that has a surprisingly cuboid shape. My background is in satellite imaging - which basically uses spectrometers mounted on satellites - so we’ll do a live look at the reflectance graphs we get for things we might be able to see from a satellite, like vegetation, soil and water and try to understand what causes these specific spectra. We’ll link these to real satellite images and cover some of the problems with doing spectroscopy from space - and even explain why a friend of mine did a whole PhD on the reflectance spectra of a concrete runway in the UK. Finally we’ll try a few experiments that may or may not work, looking at the uses of spectroscopy in chemistry and measuring aerosols. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/51-lights-spectrometer-action

What does designing software have in common with keeping people alive? More than you might think, probably. Decomposing software problems might take different knowledge than turning syndromes into diagnoses, but if you’ve got the skills to do one, you’re well on your way to the other. Join a computer scientist turned ambulance crew, awaiting results on their Masters in Paramedic Science, to learn how to take a software engineering approach to saving a life – from the roadside all the way to the bedside in A&E. No prior knowledge required: you won’t get a qualification, or medical advice, but you will learn what a primary survey has to do with requirements-gathering, how to put a breakpoint in a patient’s heart without opening them up, and how screwing in a lightbulb can tell you what part of someone’s brain is broken. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/77-how-to-debug-a-human

My husband and I have been together for 19 years, since meeting at university. We’re opposites in many ways but have somehow made it work. He loves salt popcorn, I prefer sweet. He enjoys plays, I love musicals. He’s a technologist; I’m far more analogue and would happily turn a bathroom light on without an app. Yet we now live in a home with more than 200 sensors, automations and connected devices, most of them carefully hidden from me. This isn’t a talk from experts or influencers, but a conversation between two ordinary people negotiating very different views on technology and how it fits into everyday life. We’ll share successes, failures, compromises and arguments, exploring what should be automated, when convenience becomes complexity, and whether everything that can be connected should be! Now with a 20-month-old daughter, we’re also navigating screens, privacy, independence and her relationship with technology. Come and join the chat! We could use a referee. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/204-the-automation-wars-one-marriage-two-tech-philosophies

A few years back we came up with the concept of a reusable event badge, and built the Tildagon. I'd like to tell you how it came to be, and walk you through the electronic, mechanical, and visual design for 2024 and 2026 and the reasoning behind the various decisions we had to make along the way. We'll go through the schematic, layout, and part selection, and hopefully some of the weirder decisions will make sense. We'll also talk about naming things, off-by-one errors, DHL being awful, and ketchup. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/70-design-decisions-behind-the-tildagon-a-technical-walkthrough

Have you ever gotten a call from a relay operator who wants to connect you with someone who's using a text phone? Did you hang up? Stop it! I want to tell you about the past, present, and future of textphones, and how deaf people and people with difficulty speaking communicate with phone users. Finally, I want you to stop hanging up on me! Let's look at the systems behind different assistive technologies, how they are used, and the people who keep them running- people who are some of the last operators in the phone network today. From early POTS tone systems for the first landlines to modern apps, we'll see how a tiny but vital corner of the phone system works. This talk will be presented in spoken English with live captioning. I am a hearing English and BSL speaker. I have used textphones and relay phone services since childhood and have worked in phone technology and technology accessibility for a number of years. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/76-phones-for-the-deaf

Learn about the fascinating and fun world of computer networks and the Internet - with no previous knowledge required. Have you ever wondered how the Internet works? Or computer networks in general? Have you tried learning this in the past, but found it too confusing or intimidating? Then this talk might be for you. We will start with a walkthrough of how data crosses your home network. Building on this, we will talk about how data reaches your internet provider continues its travels through the Internet. We will briefly touch on different technologies that are used (cabled vs wifi networking), and give a high-level explanation of how pathfinding works in the Internet. Afterwards you will have an idea of how Ethernet, and common Internet Protocols (DHCP, DNS, BGP). While we cannot cover everything, we will show you how to learn more about this fascinating world. The talk will mention how you can use network simulators or participate in large distributed networks to try different Internet technologies yourself. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/98-so-how-does-the-internet-really-work

James Bond would have been a better spy if he were female. I've broken into dozens of buildings, from banks and museums to law firms and medical institutions. Using social engineering techniques, I've gained access to restricted areas, connected to internal networks, and even walked away with company devices, all by exploiting assumptions people make, often simply because I'm a woman. I'm no criminal; I work in Cyber Security with a focus on simulating real-world attacks. In this talk, you'll get an insight into the world of social engineering and offensive Cyber Security, learn how attackers manipulate trust and human behaviour, and you'll even have the chance to work through a real-world scenario to see if you could successfully gain access to a building yourself. This isn't a talk on feminism; this is a talk about how using sexism and prejudice can make you a really great spy. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/206-breaking-in-to-buildings-with-boobs

Do we decide if we can play an instrument before we've even seen it? How much of our self-belief about our musicianship is based on adverse childhood experiences with cheap conventional instruments? How can we break through this barrier and rediscover the joy of noise, sound and musical play by shifting the idea of what constitutes a musical instrument? Join us as we explore new ways of making music and sound with interfaces created from root vegetables, recycled materials and willing human test subjects in front of a live studio audience. Using a range of sensors, interfaces and microcomputers, we will explore accessible ways of making music and discuss why this matters so much for those who face disabling barriers when using conventional instruments. Sometimes, the best musical instrument is a carrot... join us to find out why. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/237-dubstep-carrots

The Windows 365 Link is a thin client, running a special edition of Windows 11, that can only connect to a "Windows 365 Cloud PC" and is otherwise useless ewaste. When it was announced, Microsoft boasted its total vendor lock-in plan, which they described as "secure-by-design architecture": no admin rights, no local data, EFI Secure Boot locked on, BitLocker always enabled. The last time EFI Secure Boot was locked on was Windows RT devices, and that caused me to personally break the Windows bootloader chain of trust, several times. Challenge accepted. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/93-they-forgot-what-happened-last-time

This talk, from a space telescope electronics engineer, looks at the background of some earth observation and astronomy missions and dives into the technology behind them. Looking at real flight hardware developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Harwell, I’ll discuss the importance of thermometry, how we measure incredibly accurate temperature from orbit, and how we know that these measurements are “true” and not garbage-in, garbage-out. We’ll look at JWST and the MIRI instrument, Sentinel-3 and the SLSTR instrument, and the next gen hardware I’ve been working on over the last few years. Finally, as I’m as much of a space nerd as the rest of you, I’ll be playing a high dynamic range recording of the NG-11 Antares launch out of Wallops AFB. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/40-temperature-in-space-how

For most bird-watchers, the fun part is watching birds in their natural habitat. For me it's all about the large-scale collection, analysis and visual representation of bird-song. In this talk I'll show you what inspired this project: visually representing the complexity and beauty of bird-song. We'll start with the slightly janky hardware I built to collect the audio then move on to the processing pipeline that tries to find each bird in a tree. Finally, we get to see what an acoustic manifold looks like in 3D video form. A large, hacky, microphone array, an FPGA, verilog, high-speed USB, lots of Python and a lot of swearing at an AI. This project was inspired by Lucio Arese's beautiful acoustic manifold videos: https://www.youtube.com/@lucioarese Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/83-taking-the-fun-out-of-bird-watching-microphone-array

Both the Sun and Jupiter and strong radio noise sources, and can be detected with fair simple radios. I'll describe how I hacked the badge to control a simple radio, while predicting if the Sun or Jupiter are in the sky and recording a portion of the radio spectrum to detect radio emissions from Jupiter's magnetosphere. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/155-turning-the-emfcamp-2018-badge-into-a-radiotelescope

Unlike most adults, I play videogames professionally with children online all day, every day. I play the games children love, such as Roblox and Fortnite, many of which parents are not interested in - either giving their children total freedom with them or banning them entirely. I will immerse adults in my world for 30 minutes and give them confidence in navigating parenting in this modern age. In this talk I will help caregivers to feel more confident in setting boundaries and limits for their child’s online gaming, by explaining the main sources of harm in some popular platforms. I give tips on how to discuss boundaries with children (especially when 'everyone in my class plays it!'), as well as describe ways I have seen children get around restrictions. I will share the games I will and will not let my own children play - and you may be surprised as to why. I will describe how I try to keep them as safe as possible online, while maintaining friendships. Young people are very welcome to attend alongside their caregivers to spark the discussion moving forward. Caregivers should be aware that there is talk of the harms in online gaming, but that these are sensitively covered. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/159-mum-can-i-play-roblox-navigating-online-gaming-safety

This talk explores the emerging concept of “An Internet for the Solar System” — a networked approach to interplanetary communication that could transform how spacecraft, habitats, and missions share data beyond Earth. Starting with NASA’s LunaNet initiative, we will examine how principles from terrestrial internet infrastructure are being adapted for the unique challenges of space: extreme latency, intermittent connectivity, and vast distances. The session will introduce Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), a key protocol framework enabling reliable communication where traditional internet models fail. We will explore how LunaNet envisions a federated system of lunar orbiters, surface relays, and Earth-based nodes working together as a scalable, interoperable network. A particular focus will be placed on ground infrastructure, including the role of commercial and community-accessible deep space facilities such as Goonhilly Earth Station. Once a cornerstone of satellite communications, Goonhilly is now re-emerging as a key player in deep space data links, supporting missions and opening opportunities for non-governmental participation in space communications. The talk will also consider future extensions of this interplanetary internet: Mars networks, autonomous routing between spacecraft, and the potential for open standards that enable wider access beyond national space agencies. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/45-an-internet-for-the-solar-system

Why are Irish number plates so much longer than British ones, despite the population being much smaller? What letters can you use on a Greek number plate? How do you drive a Japanese-registered car abroad, when the number plate is full of kanji and kana? Why do some people give Belgian cars with five-character plates a wide berth? Are those supercars with Arabic number plates you see in West London even legal? I've always been a bit obsessed with vehicle registration plates. I like spotting the hidden information in them, but I also like seeing the decisions encoded in their formats, and how those have played out over time. Everywhere seems to have come up with its own solution to the same problem, they're all different, and seemingly innocuous decisions can have significant impacts later on. These superficially trivial identifiers turn out to be much more than that, intersecting design, politics, information encoding, and even questions of identity. They're also, I hope to show, fun, and can make us all feel better about having to live with the consequences of bad choices we made in the past. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/48-whats-in-a-number-plate

Astronomical observations show that our universe is expanding faster and faster in all directions due to something we call ‘dark energy’ – but what exactly is it? There are many theories out there, and astrophysicists have an unlikely ally in the search – atomic physicists like myself. As part of my PhD research, I used lasers to trap and cool atoms to use as tiny sensors to search for new physics, including searching for evidence of a specific dark energy candidate, the chameleon field. In this talk I will give an overview of the physics behind dark energy and my experiment, explain how atomic physics experiments have applications across all sorts of fields, and why even though I ended up measuring zero, that’s still moving science forward. Note: no actual chameleons were harmed in the making of this talk. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/246-killing-the-astrophysical-chameleon

Imagine a world where were stronger. Imagine how much easier your life would be… how many fewer trips you would have spent lugging your camping equipment across the EMF carpark for a start! This talk could help make that world into your reality, and sooner than you think. In this talk I will outline my own journey from the girl picked last in sports to the woman deadlifting her bodyweight - which is way more achievable than you might think! I’ll outline the benefits of strength training at any age, talk through some common misconceptions, and offer practical tips for getting started (no meat smoothies or protein shakes required!). I will focus on strength training from the perspective of a female beginner, but people of all gender identities are welcome and most of the tips will be similar regardless. Interested, but worried that you might injure yourself, or that you can’t get to the gym enough, or that your body will change in ways you don’t like? This talk is for you. I’ll cover all of these topics and more, and hopefully persuade you that you belong in the gym too! Note I am an enthusiastic amateur and definitely not an expert or a professional. Strength training, like any sport, involves risks and any future lifting you decide to do will be at your own risk. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/160-how-i-became-nearly-as-strong-as-the-average-untrained-man

Six years ago, I was an artist with no engineering qualifications, no formal technical training, and absolutely no business operating industrial robots worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Today, I lead robotics projects for companies around the world. This talk is a light-hearted cautionary tale of how curiosity, persistence, and an unhealthy number of browser tabs completely changed the direction of my life. Through stories of failure, career detours, imposter syndrome, accidental entrepreneurship, and one particularly unconventional job application I want to inspire others to chase their dreams. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/226-from-zero-to-engineering-superhero

Content warning: Contains frank conversations about death Death is inevitable, yet our digital infrastructure remains woefully unprepared for it. While traditional "Letters of Wishes" provide a static roadmap for executors, they lack the agency to interact with our complex, data-driven lives. This workshop introduces the concept of the Machine-Readable Letter of Wishes: a framework for post-mortem autonomy. By applying a "If This, Then That" (IFTTT) logic to digital legacies, we will explore how to automate final wishes across various services, ensuring data is handled with human dignity and precision. Traditionally, a Letter of Wishes is a physical document offering non-binding guidance to those named in a will. However, in an era of encrypted accounts, fragmented cloud storage and AI. Paper often falls short. This workshop moves from the philosophical to the practical: * Defining the digital legacy: Identifying the specific data points, social accounts, and assets that constitute a modern legacy. * Pipe mapping: Applying IFTTT methodology to personal wishes (e.g., "If I am inactive for 12 months, then transfer my photo archive to named person * Exploring autonomy: Discussing the ethical implications of automated execution and how it can alleviate the "administrative burden of grief" for executors. In the workshop people will gain a foundational understanding of how automation can protect digital rights and dignity, starting that important conversation that benefits individuals, their loved ones, and society. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/151-have-you-thought-about-your-digital-legacy

(Alt title - Look at this Graph: How to make Visualisations to be Proud of) You probably encounter at least one data visualisation every day - whether that's in the news, in your own projects, or just scrolling through r/dataisugly. But what makes a visualisation good or bad? Data visualisation lets us leverage the powerful parallel processing abilities of our visual cognition system to understand data in an intuitive way. However, this system is also subject to bias, leaving us vulnerable to misunderstanding if the visualisation is designed poorly. As Tim Harford puts it, it is not always the "ugly" visualisations that are the most misleading, but the "beautiful". In this talk I will discuss some classic dataviz rules of thumb, as well as newer research that may challenge these heuristics (spoiler alert: pie charts might not be as bad as you think!). I'll also discuss some ways you can make your own visualisations beautiful, interesting and trustworthy, using the R package ggplot2 as a worked example. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/241-data-visualisation-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly

This time is reserved for Lightning Talks - signup details to be published soon. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/376-lightning-talks

A deep dive into the history and technical innovations that have facilitated the (usually) speedy transit of millions of daily passengers across London. We begin with a short history of the network, cover the differences required for tunnel based signalling under a bustling capital, explore some amazing inventions to handle rising passenger demand, and finish with the current state of communications based train control which has been gradually displacing traditional fixed signalling on the underground. The author is a volunteer at the London Transport Museum but this talk is not affiliated. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/36-signalling-on-the-london-underground

QR Codes! They're everywhere, and after this talk you'll see them everywhere. They've invaded every part of modern life - but how did they get there? (Have they always been here, in secret?) This talk will cover the history of scanning things that contain information such as the barcode, covering not just one but TWO whole dimensions of scanning. Where was the first barcode (spoilers, it involves trains)? Is it true that barcodes caused a conspiracy in the 1980s? We'll learn what competitors are there for the QR code and why they failed under the might of the QR. We'll explore why the QR code so pervasive in modern society and what makes them so good. This presentation will generally be light hearted and whimsical, and will contain several jokes, some serious security advice, but generally be light entertainment. There will be no AI imagery or text. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/234-a-brief-history-of-the-qr-code-and-other-scannable-things

Bingo meets Tech meets Comedy. An interactive, smartphone powered comedy act like no other, fun for ages 8 to 8000. Experience a whole new side of bingo created by Foxdog Studios (Lloyd & Pete) and their robotic bingo mascot, Mr Bing. Expect chaos, games and laughs. Join the fun without leaving your seat as bingo cards are beamed to your phone using their own homemade software and play with their DIY robots. Claim your prize by tapping the button and blast “Bingo!” out the main speakers (but be ready to go to bingo jail if you cry wolf). After a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe and an award winning run in Adelaide, Australia - Pete and Lloyd are bringing bingo back to EMF. Bring a phone to join in, or share a phone with someone who has one! “The lo-fi tech wizardry is ingenious, and it’s irresistible fun to play along” Guardian As seen on BBC Click, CBBC Live Lessons, Channel 4 UK, featured in The Guardian, The Observer, WIRED Magazine UK and heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/69-foxdog-studios-robo-bingo-2-0

As AI systems are getting smarter, safety researchers are increasingly concerned by a new capability of these models - they are getting very good at lying. This behaviour is seen both in and out of evaluation settings, and has a fascinating range of root causes. In this talk, we'll investigate the phenomena of AI deception across a broad range of scenarios. Discover how chatbots lie for your own good, when models strategically hide their capabilities, and why ChatGPT is better than you at Avalon. We'll cover how researchers are training model organisms designed to be good at deception, and how this helps us to detect scheming in the wild. Most importantly, we'll attempt to answer the question: how worried should we be about all this? Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/154-so-ais-are-lying-to-us-now-huh

Video Games are commonly in English, German, Japanese and many other languages.. but what about less spoken languages? Whilst I was working as the Lead Sound Designer on a AA game, I also ended up being the Welsh Language Lead on the project, with the help of a small team I chose the insane challenge of translating a AA video game into Welsh + Voice Acting with no prior experience in doing so and also re-learning the language at the same time, a task that I knew would be massive, but turned out to be even bigger than I thought. This talk unpacks the process of translating, casting and recording/editing dialogue for what would turn out to be the biggest video game to have ever been translated into Welsh with Voice Acting. This talk also goes into why more games should include smaller languages and why projects should consider more cultures. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/80-mind-your-language-how-to-translate-a-video-game-and-why

This talk is about how the PolyGen game works, see inside the units, a breakdown of how all the bits hang together. This is a combination of a talk and hands-on opening the units up and seeing inside them. A chance for people to ask questions, play around with the insides of the units. For those playing PolyGen this will be an opportunity to capture a special "talk only" unit. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/293-polygen-inside-the-game

We love escape rooms, and it's awesome how the industry has evolved to provide ever more impressive and immersive experiences. Some of the top escape rooms today are huge warehouse-spanning installations with six-figure budgets. But what if they didn't have to be? Last year, our team had the opportunity to build a pop-up escape room. We wanted to match the creative ambition and capacity for wonder demonstrated by the biggest and best escape rooms in the world; implemented with the scrappy enthusiasm, inherent impermanence, and modest budget of an amateur theatre production. What we built turned out to be a real dream. Over our five-month run, our core team (gradually bolstered by dozens more volunteers) provided a unique and delightful experience for over six hundred visitors of all ages, including twenty children, two babies, and one dog. We received amazing feedback, tremendously kind reviews, and hugely encouraging industry recognition. In this talk we'll cover how we turned our ideas into reality, what went to plan, what went wrong, and what we learned. Most importantly, we hope to show what is possible and perhaps inspire other projects, because we'd love to see more escape rooms in the world. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/229-if-you-can-dream-it-building-a-pop-up-escape-room

Following the talk "Remote controlled chaos cart" at EMF 2024, I have been inspired to do my own take on the same idea. But instead of starting with a trolley and a hoverboard, I decided to start with a mobility scooter. I have ME/CFS, and get to use a mobility scooter most of the time while out and about. But they are fundamentally boring vehicles, and could use a little adapting to be more fun. They are also 24v vehicles, and it is amazing just how many 12v devices can be used at 24v. After starting with a USB charger, I moved on to lights, and then a foot pedal for speed control. Arduinos were involved and sacrificed. A diversion was had when my motor failed, but I then returned to adapting the horn, and then having to transfer much of the stuff to a new scooter when a second motor failed and couldn't be replaced. The takeaway is somewhere along the lines of "Just because you have to use a mobility scooter, it doesn't have to be plain, boring, and can be hacked for interesting features". Mine certainly is now. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/86-hacking-a-mobility-scooter-for-features-and-lights

Arcade machines have a rich history, at times at the forefront of technology, and often the most bizarre machines. Machines that delivered electric shocks (supposedly therapeutic) and working automata models of executions or hen pecked husbands (titled ‘Is Marriage worth it’). The first seaside arcade opened in Blackpool in 1894, under the newly built tower. The machines were all clockwork automata scenes, with an attendant constantly rewinding them. Arcades became widespread after the craze for Edison’s Kinetoscope, the predecessor of ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines. Kinetoscopes were a sensation – the first time anyone had seen moving images of any sort, so ‘Kinetoscope parlours’ sprang up in every city centre. Once cinemas got established the craze faded and the parlours diversified – adding fortune tellers, ball runs, shooting games and of course one armed bandits. The arrival of computer games in the 1980s shook everything up. At first very popular in arcades but soon eclipsed by cheaper to play home computer games. Most city centre arcades have since closed, though many seaside arcades survive with ‘redemption’ machines. These spit out tickets when you win. Before leaving you take all your tickets to the desk to ‘redeem’ a prize. The talk will be illustrated by photos and videos of the old machines and also some of Tim’s own arcade machines influenced by their history. Tim has made over 40 arcade machines and now runs two arcades. The talk will include some of Tim’s machines that were particularly inspired by the history. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/127-a-short-history-of-arcades-and-arcade-machines

Markus Hess wird aus erste Hand über seine Rolle als KGB-Hacker, die technischen Möglichkeiten und Methoden jener Zeit, seine Motivation sowie die Lehren für heutige IT-Sicherheits- und Resilienzfragen berichten. In den späten 1980er-Jahren war Markus Hess maßgeblich an einer der bedeutendsten Spionage- und Hackeraktivitäten des Kalten Krieges beteiligt. Als Teil der sogenannten KGB-Hack-Affäre verschaffte er sich Zugriff auf westliche Computersysteme und leitete militärische und wissenschaftliche Informationen an den sowjetischen Geheimdienst weiter. Nach der Zerschlagung der Hackergruppe wurde er 1990 wegen geheimdienstlicher Agententätigkeit verurteilt. In diesem Vortrag wird er die Geschichte aus einer sehr persönlichen Sicht - mal ernst, mal anekdotisch - über die Anfänge der Cyberspionage erzählen. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://talks.hackover.de/ho26/talk/GQMX88/

I have spent my career working as an electrically biased technician supporting scientific and engineering research. In 2022/23 a post-COVID malaise led me to put in a speculative application with The British Antarctic Survey. Sometime later I was flying into Rothera Research Station, Antarctica. Before arriving, I had dreams of being surrounded by Antarctic wildlife such as penguins, seals and whales. I hoped I would be able to ride a snowmobile and engage in snow-covered adventures. I knew that this was somewhat far-fetched as this is just a job, albeit in the most hostile environment on earth. To my surprise I found that, while there were long days of working hard there were also ample opportunities to be surrounded by wildlife and engage the activities I dreamed of. I was even a co-pilot on a project to one of the UK’s most remote Antarctic outposts, the Sky-Blu Field Station. I saw orcas swimming in unison to create a wave to knock seals from an iceberg – just like in the first episode of Frozen Planet! At the end of my adventure, I left Antarctica on Boaty McBoatface for a 5-day voyage across the most dangerous seas on earth. My talk is reliant on sharing the amazing photos I took while I was there. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/34-a-technician-in-antarctica-working-at-the-end-of-the-world

1980: Royal Signals and Radar Establishment researchers realise Flex, a mould-breaking, comprehensively alternative vision of computing. Features: - All-hypertext interface (oddly never described thus) - Allusions to ancient Egyptian orthography - Unforgeable pointers for security - Write-once filesystem with nameless files (which you didn't mind) - Implementation in the (infamously) complicated language Algol 68 - First-class functions and typechecking everywhere (I'll explain what that means) - Memorable... hardware choices Today: Flex runs again for the first time in (probably) decades! In this spirited talk (for general audiences *and* OS geeks) I'll live-demo its unique "feel" while describing its origins, fate, and unlikely revival (hint: mouldy 8" floppies). I'll also call for help: maybe YOU know people and information needed to share it publicly. Ahead of its time, maybe ours too, or maybe outside of it: everyone should be able to try Flex. Hopefully this talk brings us one step closer! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/91-rsre-flex-reviving-an-innovative