A WarGames-Style DEFCON Threat Level Indicator That Actually Works

WarGames is a classic movie, and a favorite among hackers — the plot does revolve around hacking. In the movie, David (played by Matthew Broderick) ends up at the NORAD command center in Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex (a real facility). As the tension in the movie builds, an indicator in the command center lights up to the current DEFCON (defense condition) level. The same indicator can also be seen in Stargate SG-1 (which also takes place inside Cheyenne Mountain).

It’s a pretty iconic movie prop, and seems like a really apt metaphor for the stress of the Cold War. As a fan of both WarGames and Stargate SG-1, Arthur Guy decided that the DEFCON indicator would be the perfect project to build from his substantial scrap pile. In his great video and build log, he goes into a lot of detail explaining how he went about creating the device.

The base structure is made of scrap wood forming a box divided up into 5 compartments, one for each DEFCON level. This was painted black, and colored acrylic panels were placed over each compartment, which correspond to those in the movie. Individually addressable LEDs (Adafruit WS2812 NeoPixels) were placed in each compartment, and are controlled with a Particle Photon.

Now, if Arthur lived in the United States, it would make sense to tie the indicator to the actual DEFCON level. But, he’s British, so that wouldn’t be very useful for him. Instead, the Photon reads the UK’s threat level from the MI5 RSS feed, and translates that into the corresponding DEFCON level (critical, for example, would be DEFCON 1). The whole project came together really nicely, looks great, and would be a fun weekend project for fans of WarGames or Stargate SG-1!