EMF Camp 2026

Today I headed home from EMF Camp 2026. This was my third time attending EMF Camp and once again I am exhausted, overwhelmed and truly grateful for once again being fortunate enough to attend. While I didn't realise it at the time, attending EMF Camp for the first time in 2022 was quite a life changing experience. Finding people who have a similar passion for things which seem unnecessary or silly to most is extremely vindicating. Since then, camps in 2024 and 2026 have become markers in time, points of reference to check in with myself and see how things have changed (I won't go into detail here, but locally, as opposed to at a global scale, everything is better). During the opening ceremony, Jonty touchingly said it better than I could write it.

To people who are experiencing EMF for the first time, I want to reassure you that there are people like you here. You do not need to be scared to be who you are, or who you want to be. I guarantee you there are people here who share your view on life and your interests, no matter how obscure they are.

When I was growing up, I wish this festival existed. It took me a long time to meet people like me, and I'm honoured to build a space with them every two years.

There were many (many) extremely lovely interactions with people I had never met before. Notably someone from a neighbouring village asked for some hot water and noticed my panthers hat. We chatted for a good half an hour about ice hockey and later exchanged some hockey stickers. I also got to meet Francis for the first time, despite having known him online for nearly 20 years at this point. I cannot imagine any other place to be quite as social as EMF while also not completely draining my social battery within an hour.

In true EMF fashion, I will begin with some stats from my adventure.

• Acquired 37 stickers, of which 11 have already been promoted to my already-very-stickery laptop.
• Collected 17 different stamps in my EMF Flight Manual, my absolute favourite being from the Scottish Consulate (an actual wax seal!)
• Found three red rabbits in places I shouldn't
• Exchanged 59 phone calls via DECT/GSM
• Received 1 voice mail, which was from myself and said "Oh it's gone to voicemail"
• Purchased 2 Hexpansions, in addition to the keyboard hexpansion which I pre-ordered
• Was gifted 2 Hexpansions (an LED pride flag (thanks Jon!) and a Tetrapod (thanks Infra Club meetup!))
• Drank at least 5 Club Mates, before the bar ran out of stock
• Acquired 2 Cisco switches (a 2960S and a 2960) from the Swap Shop, for the hackspace
• Attended 3 talks, one being the opening ceremony, the second being a talk about pigeons, and the third being the infrastructure review. This is significantly less than previous years.
• Had 3 showers during my time there.
• Ate several tonnes of dust.

And now onto the juicy bits.

Projects

For some reason I was nerd sniped into contributing to two fairly large hackspace projects for EMF Camp. The first one is a Slushy Machine, which James decided to buy for some reason from Birmingham last year. The second was supposed to be a mini jumbotron but grew into a mini jumbotron and combat robot arena controller.

The Slushy Machine

Fortunately James took care of most of this project, which is good, since it was his project. He 3D printed some food-safe PETG servo-driven valves, as well as an enclosure for a Big Red Button. The idea being that you press the button, pay for a slushy via our SumUp, which then unlocks the valves for a period of time allowing one to vend a slushy unattended. I cobbled together some bits using an Arduino and WizNet to control the lights and talk over MQTT to setup the SumUp transactions. The backend was literally a shell script running in screen, and surprisingly it held up. The code for this is on my cgit. Gareth did an amazing job on the art work for this machine. We all love the Planet Slush creatures. The machine looked extremely cool at night with the LED lighting.

In total, 300 slushies were purchased, although at least two were refunded. Towards the end of EMF Camp, we set the slushy controller so that it could vend for free to avoid wasting the syrup.

The main sticking points seemed to be the levels on the machine becoming too low, which resulted in not much slushy machine vended. We had installed level sensors to the machine, so a bodge was later added to allow additional vending time when the level was low. If the slushy machine ripped you off, I am sorry and I a hope you are willing to accept that loss as a contribution to the hackspace. This was a project after all and sometimes things don't work quite as intended. Where possible we tried to refund the failures, although quite a few of the issues were due misinterpretation of the instructions (which is arguably also our fault).

The Robodrome

For some reason Steve submitted a CFP (Call for Participation) to have an installation of a combat robot arena.

My original contribution (nerd sniping) was to build a small jumbotron for the arena, to be mounted at the top, like you'd see in any sports arena. The four panels came from Limehouse Lab, which Russ kindly organised the distribution of (thank you! as if you hadn't done enough already). Once again, Gareth did the artwork for these displays. I used a spare Arduino GIGA, which was astonishingly fast, rendering to four displays and also handling the playback of audio effects. The source for this can also be found on my cgit. Steve had already designed some boards which plug into the displays, distributing the signal lines and power, so I was glad to not have to do that. When driven by the GIGA, there were unfortunately some graphics glitches. Adding some 74HC541 fixed this :)

Early completion of the jumbotron resulted in a partial nerdsniping (I offered) with wiring and programming the arena controller. This took quite a while and contained MANY wires.

The remainder of this project was primarily completed by Steve and Sam. Steve designed and built the arena and made a start on the controller, as well as resurrecting and upgrading some old controllers he'd built. Sam built the arena pits, as well as three (maybe four?) robots. The amount of effort these two put into the installation was significant and I think the end result was phenomenal, even if there were some flaws and it wasn't quite how it was initially imagined to be. The robot arena unfortunately bit into most of Thursday due to issues with the pits not evenly going up and down. The original plan was for the pits to lower after 30 seconds of play, with IR receivers to detect which robot had been pushed in. Due to issues with the pits not evenly raising and then getting jammed, we decided to disconnect the motors for these and use the arena as a flat surface in which robots could battle.

Many other hackspace members also helped with this project. Ali did a bunch of last minute wiring til 12am the night before heading to EMF (even though he wasn't coming to EMF). Andrew, Shane, Gareth and myself each tapped at least one hole. Mags, Bauhaus and Robyn beautifully painted the outside of the arena. I am certain there were other contributions but the last minute panic made it extremely difficult to keep up with what was going on.

It is an unfortunate reality that any project will make its bugs and failures abundantly clear in the presence of EMF Camp, and therefore inevitably eat into portions of time you'd otherwise be spending relaxing or attending talks. That might not seem very fun to most people, but in the context of camp, kind of is… so I'm not particularly upset by this.

With this being an "official" installation, which ended up in the Robot Arms, it had a bit of support from the Installations Team, who were lovely and absolutely fantastic.

Random Events and Stories

In my previous posts on EMF Camp, I had tried to structure it by day. I kind of lost track this time, and with the extra projects going on it was hard to keep track. I also found that I took far fewer photos this year, despite seeing so much.

Eastnor Cryogenics

On the Saturday, Lex found a poster which was offering Dry Ice. They called themselves Eastnor Cryogenics and said to phone BRRR (2777) if you want dry ice. Which we did, of course. After some postulation as to whether this was going to be some kind of shady drug exchange, a man turned up with a thermos flask containing the "goods". It was indeed dry ice. The guy seemed very cool, and explained that he had purchase 20kg of dry ice and was having fun giving it away. After some horror stories from David about driving his car after storing dry ice in it over night, we began to play. This was an extremely fun encounter. We offered him a slushy, and he said he'd like to come back when it's hot (since it was 9pm), but unfortunately we did not see him again. Thank you for the dry ice!

Null Sector

I've never really enjoyed night clubs and am not someone who will dance, but I always enjoy my time in Null Sector. The effort gone into the decorations is insane. I find that my preferred way to enjoy this kind of environment is to find a good wall to learn against and to enjoy the vibrations, sometimes with a bit of head bopping when it sounds good.

Mini Tours with Matt

Matt is always quite involved with the setup and teardown of EMF and often has access to places you wouldn't normally get to see. In 2024 he gave me a tour of the generators, and this year I got to see inside the DKs, as well as see some of the behind the scenes of null sector. Thanks Matt!

Furlong

A furlong appeared. For the uninitiated, this is a Furby which has been extended. I was given the Furlong to take care of, in exchange for a Slushy. I later walked around EMF Camp while stroking the Furlong until someone looked surprised by it. I then politely forced the Furlong upon them.

Website Workshop

Mags submitted a CFP for building websites, which I had offered to help with, along with Jon and Alfie. Since not many people ended up needing help, this mostly became myself, Jon and Alfie chatting in a corner, while Mags ran the workshop. Sorry for being noisy. And thank you for tolerating our noise when I knocked things over.

Packing Up

And then today we packed up. We started the day by sharing a Club Mate. It was tiring and we had a limited amount of time to take things apart. It was good to have so many helps in the village - I was able to go to the Robot Arms and help Steve and Jon with the packing of the Robodrome.

The End

I leave EMF with a mixed bag of feelings. I am sad to return to reality where not everyone has a special interest, but also really glad to have experienced it again. It was an amazing weekend and I just feel so glad to have been surrounded by so many lovely people. The weather was disgustingly hot and there was so much dust, but none of that mattered because I was at EMF Camp. I'm really excited for 2028.

Related posts:

• EMF Camp 2024
• EMF Camp 2022

Tags: emfcamp