What happens when Netflix gives its staff two days to hack the platform and create innovative (and often unnecessary) variations on the streaming service?

This. This is what happens.

Hack Day Summer 2017 Teleflix Uploaded by NetflixOpenSource on 2017-08-28.

Netflix Hack Day

Twice a year, the wonderful team at Netflix is given two days to go nuts and create fun, random builds, taking inspiration from Netflix and its content. So far they’ve debuted a downgraded version of the streaming platform played on an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), turned hit show Narcos into a video game, and utilised VR technology into many more builds that, while they’ll never be made public, have no doubt led to some lightbulb moments for the creative teams involved.

DarNES – Netflix Hack Day – Winter 2015 In a world… where devices proliferate… darNES digs back in time to provide Netflix access to the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

Kevin Spacey? More like ‘Kevin Spacebar’, am I right? Aha…ha…haaaa…I’ll get my coat.

Teleflix

The Teleflix build from this summer’s Hack Day is obviously the best one yet, as it uses a Raspberry Pi. By writing code that decodes the dots and dashes from an original 1920s telegraph (provided by AT&T, and lovingly restored by the team using ketchup!) into keystrokes, they’re able to search for their favourite shows via Morse code.

Morse code, for the unaware, is a method for transmitting letters and numbers via a standardised series of beeps, clicks, or flashes. Stuck in a sticky situation? Three dots followed by three dashes and a further three dots gives you ‘SOS’. Sorted. So long as there’s someone there to see or hear it, who also understands Morse Code.

Morse Code Morse code was a method of transmiting textual information as a series of on-off tones that could be directly understood by a skilled listener. Mooo-Theme: http://soundcloud.com/mooojvm/mooo-theme

So if you’d like to watch, for example, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, you simply send: – …. . / ..- -. -… .-. . .- -.- .- -… .-.. . / -.- .. — — -.– / … -.-. …. — .. -.. – and you’re set. Easy!

To reach Netflix, the team used a Playstation 4. However, if you want to skip a tech step, you could stream Netflix directly to your Raspberry Pi by following this relatively new tutorial. Nobody at Pi Towers has tried it out yet, but if you have we’d be interested to see how you got on in the comments below.

And if you’d like to play around a little more with the Raspberry Pi and Morse code, you can pick up your own Morse code key, or build one using conductive components such as buttons or bananas, and try it out for yourself.

Alex’s Netflix-themed Morse code quiz

Just for fun, here are the titles of some of my favourite shows to watch on Netflix, translated into Morse code. Using the key below, why not take a break and challenge your mind to translate them back into English. Reward yourself +10 imaginary House Points for each correct answer.