Remember when I wrote I was going to the WHY2025 hacker camp? Because I totally went there and it was great! I totally missed out on the opportunity to post on my weblog from there, but at least I shared a few pics on Mastodon when camping - did I mention even the music was great there?

Night falling over WHY2025, me sitting next to my tent, working on my laptop. Photo taken by Bert Hubert

One of the reasons I did not even really think about blogging while being there was that even though I brought a laptop, after using it to set up my DECT phone on the first day I only touched it to move it out of my way when I was in my tent. It was such a social and versatile experience that I did not even want to spend time behind my laptop. It also did not help that during day time it was pretty sunny and warm, so I wanted my bag to be as light as possible ;) #hydrate

Siemens DECT phone connected to the camp network, ThinkPad in the background

While I have been aware of this hacker camp for decades, this was my first time actually participating, and I went in pretty blank. I borrowed a tent and some gear because I haven't camped in a bit, and I brought a bit of electronics, expecting a possibility to tinker with them together with others, and maybe program a bit in between talks or such. While that could have very well happened (a lot of tinkering took place everywhere), my time was mainly spent socialising with people I hadn't seen in sometimes ages, with meeting new people, listening to some interesting talks, forcing myself to finally wield a soldering iron, deeply enjoying the music and the general atmosphere and just emerging myself in some kind of nerdy festival with loads of friendly and interesting people.

The soldering is an interesting story; I've been shying away from soldering for way too long, but decided to participate in a workshop on Friday afternoon. However, there was a power outage of 2 hours, so the workshop was postponed to 21:30 that evening. I was tired but went there anyway and after deploying my augmented reality goggles (narrator: his reading glasses), I messed around with soldering little SMD parts to a print in the shape of a little duck. The LEDs were so tiny that I could barely see which side was up or down, or left or right (kind of important if you want to actually make it work). They tended to get displaced and rotated whenever I tried to place them with my tweezers, so that was... interesting. What was more interesting was that I was enjoying this stumbingly and slightly frustrating experience. I was one of the slower people there (most people actually had some experience already), but I got a decent amount of components in place before I could not really keep my hands from trembling. It turned out it had gotten pretty cold at 23:15 and there was actual fog inside the hardware hacking tent. I decided not to hike back to my tent to fetch a sweater, but to turn in for the night and finish the project another day. In the end I still have the pieces unfinished here at home, but this week I actually got myself a soldering iron with active tip and a USB-C port (hey, it's 2025 after all), and some handy accessories so I can continue this experience wherever I want.

My soldering bench while attempting to solder tiny LEDs to a small board, in the shape of a duck

BTW, you can browse the photo album where those images are from with the left/right arrow keys, or by swiping the image.

Lasers over the WHY2025 camping site, rotating green one on the left

There was enough RGB to share with the world, including a big green laser on top of the main music stage slowly rotating lighthouse-style and illuminating the air above the camp and the trees surrounding it. The fire cannisters were actually rejigged fire-extinguishers (oh irony), remote controlled by the music through DMX and of course equipped with a lot of safety fallbacks.

Really foggy camping site

Did I mention it tended to get foggy in the night? It was unclear when it was real fog, or the big fog machines by some of the villages were going full tilt ;)

Datenklo in the fog

A pretty clever way of providing both wired and wireless networking (DECT phone coverage included), were the countless so-called Datenklo's on the fields. Daten is German for 'data', with 'klo' standing for toilet because, yes, those are the well-known temporary toilets seen at festivals, construction sites and a lot of other places. These however were clean, dry and filled with fiber and ethernet networking equipment, with an LED torch on top providing status (when lighted and moving, everything was fine, otherwise there was no network, or power) and the wifi box. I think the German word originates from the CCC camps.

Remote controlled car made from two hooverboards

One random encounter was with a guy controlling this 15kg car with a drone controller. He made the car himself, by combining parts of two hooverboards together; the left wheels are from one, the right wheels from the other. Add some automotive-class LED highbeam and RGB LEDs and it was both speedy and showy. While driving it around, a bystander asked whether it was strong enough to hold a person; this resulted in that person surfing on the thing to much delight of us all.

Food court by night

Everywhere I went, there was music, and on the main stage that the camp actually was able to acquire from the Liquicity Drum-n-Bass festival that occupied the terrain previously, there were a ton of versatile and great-sounding acts. One of the highlights for me was a jamming session by REYN Ouwehand and another being Prins S. en de Geit which is a weird but fun band that is getting big here in The Netherlands, but who were enjoying their time at the camp. It also helped that the versions of their songs that they were performing slapped pretty hard :) A lot of jumping and hakken ensued.

The crazy guy from Symphony of Fire was also amazing, with a demo of different types of detonations and fire, and his show performing music on Tesla coils and various (gas) explosion devices.

Oh, did I mention there even was a hackerspace on a boat? The ship Serendiep was moored at the edge of the terrain and provided a puzzle labyrinth and their hackerspace, with which they normally roam the inner waters of The Netherlands and Europe.

It was an amazing experience, with so many like-minded, but also thoughtful and thought-provoking people. Many things to see and do. I am already looking forward to the 2029 edition.

For an impression of how it was for me, check out my WHY2025 gallery.

Eery tuinkabouter (garden gnome)