Technology-focused camping festival in the UK
Electromagnetic Field (also known as EMF, or EMF Camp) is a camping festival in the UK, held every two years, for hackers, geeks, engineers and scientists. It features talks and workshops covering a wide variety of topics. EMF is a non-profit event run entirely by a team of volunteers.
Attendees of EMF receive an electronic conference badge, funded by sponsorship, which in 2014 included an LCD screen, Arduino-compatible microcontroller, and a radio transceiver.
History.
The first Electromagnetic Field event was held in 2012 at Pineham in Milton Keynes, and completely sold out a 499-person capacity. Each tent at EMF 2012 was provided with power and the internet, via a 2.5 km direct microwave link to a data centre which provided 370 Mbit/s to the campsite. Over 50 speakers gave talks, including Ben Goldacre.
In 2013, a smaller interim one-day event called Electromagnetic Wave was held in London on board the MS Stubnitz.
The main event was held again in 2014 at Hounslow Hall Estate, Newton Longville (near Milton Keynes). Over 1,200 tickets were sold. As with the 2012 event, internet was provided by a direct microwave link which provided 436 Mbit/s. The entire event had over 100 talks, workshops and events with a separate track for children. Notable speakers included Tom Watson MP and Simon Singh. In addition there were 45 'villages' that ran their own workshops and events including silver smithing, wood turning and making stroopwafels.
The 2016 event was held on 5–7 August at Loseley Park, Guildford with an attendance of over 1,600. The 1 Gbit/s internet connection was provided by fibre, and the on-site network had a 10 Gbit/s backbone.
Since 2018, Electromagnetic Field has been held at Eastnor Castle Deer Park in Herefordshire. The 2020 edition was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but the event resumed in 2022.
Badges.
Each event, up to and including the 2024 event had a custom, programmable, battery-powered badge.
For the first event in 2012 the badge was named TiLDA, based on an ATMega 32U4 and was Arduino-compatible.
The 2014 badge (TiLDA MKe) was an Arduino Due-compatible badge. It was the first to come with an LCD, and all subsequent EMF badges included an LCD screen. It included Accelerometer and Gyroscope sensors, along with a long-range wireless transceiver.
The 2016 badge was named TiLDA MK3, and dropped Arduino-compatibility for sake of Micropython. It was built around the STM32L4 microcontroller, and included a WiFi module, gyroscope and magnetometer.
The 2018 badge (TiLDA MK4) included a SIM800 GSM module and T9 number keypad.
The 2022 badge was renamed to TiDAL. It was a badge in a USB-C thumbdrive format, with an LCD screen, a joystick, and various buttons.
For 2024, the event debuted the Tildagon badge, planned to be used for all future events alongside hardware "hexpansion" boards. The Tildagon badge is based on an Espressif ESP32-S3 with 2MB of RAM and 8MB of storage.
Synchronization with other events.
In the years when Electromagnetic Field does not occur, Chaos Communication Camp (in Germany) and one of the Hack-Tic hacker events (in the Netherlands) occur alternately.
References.
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