MIT Turns Any Collection of Cellphones Into a Jumbotron

MIT, that haven of gadget ideas, is at it again. The above image isn’t an art installation or a carefully done Photoshop; all of those cell phones are showing exactly the same image, just different parts of it. So how the heck does that work?

Using the program Rick Borovoy calls the “Junkyard Jumbotron”. Borovoy wanted to design something that would let multiple cellphones combine to form a larger screen, for civic purposes and because, well, it’s really neat.

We say “program”, but really what it is is a web page that updates the image on the server, and that’s it. As a result, it’s completely cross-platform: all you need on your cell phone, laptop, or collection of flatscreens is a web browser. It already allows for scrolling and zooming, and Borovoy is working on incorporating video next.

This is designed to be a civic tool, part of Borovoy’s Brown Bag Toolkit, which is designed to improve meetings, canvassing a neighborhood, and even just running into a friend on the street. The software is open source and free. For more information about the Brown Bag toolkit, and to see the Junkyard Jumbotron in glorious video, check out the announcement at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media.