How to Get Electric Sheep on a Computer

Image by the Electric Sheep

Electric Sheep is a screensaver that was created by Scott Draves. When your computer sleeps, it communicates with other computers all over the world via the Internet. It’s a free, open source program and once you install it, you get beautiful graphics on your computer that morph. These are abstract animations and they’re beautiful to watch.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Broadband Internet connection

1. Make sure you have high bandwidth. You can only download Electric Sheep and have them work on your computer if you have a broadband connection. You cannot use a dial-up connection to download Electric Sheep since they have to communicate with other broadband clients.

2. Go to the Electric Sheep download page and pick a client to start your download (see Resources below). There is a list of stable versions and beta versions. If you’re new to the service you might consider picking a stable version until you’re more familiar with the program. Each download has release notes that you can view. Click a version and run it. Once the download is complete, click install and install it by following the easy instructions. The client will walk you through the installation process, which is only approximately two or three clicks of your mouse.

3. Go to your control panel and choose your screen saver once you have your Electric Sheep installed. You will see a screensaver on your list that has the words Electric Sheep and some numbers. Choose that as your screensaver, click "Apply" and then "OK."

4. Render your flock of sheep. Electric Sheep will have to download a “flock” of sheep so you may see either a sheep animation telling you it’s downloading or you’ll see the animations immediately but they might stutter a bit while it’s rendering new sheep. Make sure to set your screensaver to a minimal setting so that you can download sheep as soon as possible. The Electric Sheep site suggests that you perform your rendering of flock at night before bed so your computer can do this while you sleep.

5. Download a sheep pack manually on the same download page if the client doesn’t download automatically. If you are using a Windows program you may have to allow your firewall to access this program. Click "Yes" when it asks you if you want to allow this program.

Tips & Warnings

• The forum and FAQs pages on the Electric Sheep website are very helpful with any troubles that might come up.

• Even though using Electric Sheep is safe and there are no known instances of viruses, any time you open your Internet connection to others, there's a possibility.

Resources

• Electric Sheep Downloads