A hardware hacker has achieved a remarkable feat by installing a Minecraft server on a budget-friendly smart lightbulb. Vimpo, the mastermind behind this innovation, has shared a brief video demonstrating the server’s functionality, showcasing the potential of low-cost technology. Central to this accomplishment is the bulb’s BL602 RISC-V-powered microcontroller, which serves as the heart of the operation.
Hardware hacksawing
Vimpo’s journey begins with a rather unconventional approach—disassembling an LED bulb purchased from AliExpress. For those accustomed to traditional incandescent bulbs, witnessing the careful opening of a lightbulb without catastrophic results may be surprising; however, modern LEDs do not rely on fragile vacuums. After accessing the internal components, Vimpo meticulously soldered connections to the bulb’s headers and verified their integrity by toggling the light on and off.
To facilitate communication with the bulb, a simple USB-to-serial adapter board was soldered to the connections, creating a reliable interface. This setup effectively transforms the lightbulb into a functional system, complete with a monitor and input peripherals, ready to host a Minecraft server.
Software shenanigans
The hardware alone is not sufficient; Vimpo also tackled the software aspect to run a Minecraft server on the smart bulb’s limited resources. The solution lies in an implementation known as Ucraft, which is available on GitHub along with a comprehensive guide for building the server on a Linux machine. Ucraft is impressively compact, with a binary size of approximately 46K bytes without authentication and 90K bytes with the authentication library. According to Vimpo, memory usage fluctuates depending on the number of active players, with a maximum heap usage of around 70K bytes when 10 players are connected, and just 20K bytes without authentication. However, Vimpo candidly acknowledges that Ucraft “lacks most, if not all, features of the vanilla server.”
In many ways, Minecraft has emerged as a modern-day equivalent to Doom, serving as a catalyst for inventive projects. It continues to inspire hardware and software enthusiasts to explore the limits of computing. Recent examples include a 5-million-parameter ChatGPT AI model integrated within Minecraft, the game running on an old GPU with only 8MB of VRAM, and even a Minecraft server constructed using 63-year-old COBOL code.
