Sounds like a fun project for [barney_1] to have done, if a little weak for a H-A-D post. Though, I might have to take his script and do the same with an old WRT router as the network backend.

Posted at 12:51 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by pokey

So we’ve got a LCD serial terminal driven by some Python code?

Sorry, can’t count myself impressed on this one.

Posted at 1:16 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by jcwren

Yeah, I’d be more impressed if it did all w/o the PC requirement.

Posted at 1:51 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by IceBrain

i think I’ll take an arduino, an ethernet shield, and a bit of code that first posts on slashdot with random witty comments when the rss feed is updated. then i’ll cram it in a little wall plug enclosure and sell them in bulk for $50.

Posted at 2:20 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by amk

@amk

you’ll make milions!

Posted at 2:31 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by alu

if you use serial port you dont even need a micro controller of any kind just a buffer(if you really cheap, resistors work fine too)

Posted at 2:40 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by therian

neat-o dealy here. would be much better if you didn’t need to hook it into the PC.

on another unrelated note…

is it just me or does _every_ post that caleb kraft makes receive some sort of comment along the lines of “not a hack!” ?? Also, i can’t bring myself to ignore the _frequent_ misspellings… ie: “sereial” in the first sentence while in the second sentence it is spelled correctly. bad grammar i can tolerate… horrible spelling is a totally different matter.

Posted at 3:32 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by an4rk

@alu

Sad as it is, I think he would be able to turn a buck doing something as simple as that. The “wow” threshold for hackaday readers is a lot higher than your average Joe. Whose to say there is any harm in that?

Posted at 4:20 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by JadedEvan

what other hack a day like blogs do you guys read?

because I used to love this place but things like this… wow. a 16×2 44780 lcd… on a protoboard… geez.
not sure what else to read though other than Make blog. but theres so much advertising it’s like standing in a mall with a used car salesman shouting at you.

Posted at 7:48 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by fyrebug

When did all of you become awesome that you could criticize everyone else’s work? You all sound like a bunch of whiny slashdot bitches.

I say: Put up, or shut up.

If you want to criticize someone else’s work, whether it’s a ‘hack’ or not, you should post a link to something you’ve done.

Posted at 8:18 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by Chris Pearson

I don’t think it’s the work that’s being criticized. it’s great that the person who built it did so and is learning something. I applaud them and fully support that they built it.

the criticizing is against the posting as it’s just not hack a day worthy.

as for put up or shut up.
I have a 44780 20×2 lcd on my desk right now feeding me twitter updates. same thing. is there a link? no, because I don’t think it’s online worthy.

Posted at 8:28 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by fyrebug

“[barney_1] built this sereial rss reader.”

A technology expert that can’t spell cereal? Shame on you.

Posted at 8:40 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by TP

I will readily grant that some people are better than others at building nifty little things. I’m pretty decent at designing microcontroller based designs, but I suck at FPGAs and analog.

I’ve also been around this industry for a *long* time. Wire wrapping our own 6502, Z80, 6800 systems in the old day was the norm. I’m not impressed by people who do this today, yet some sites seem to make a big deal out of it.

That said, I do have a lot of respect for people who design and implement their own CPUs, whether it’s in TTL, bitslice type processors, or FPGAs. That requires a lot more smarts than we did to take a stock Z80, etc design, and add some additional memory, I/O, or any other cookbook type technology.

It seems this is a lost artform. I say “good work” to the guy who got this Python script working on a serial terminal. I’m sure he learned something.

But hack-a-day worthy? Hitting every DIY website? It’s just not an impressive project. To me, it’s in the same class as making a LED blink.

Have I put up or shut up? No. I build my projects, large and small, and use them. I’m terrible about documenting them. Once they work or do what I want (which is not always the same thing!), I lose interest in them.

http://www.tinymicros.com/wiki/1-wire_network Here’s something I did with Dallas 1-wire. It’s *trivial*. No rocket science, no magic, no hard thinking. And the only reason this page exists is because the OWFS group wanted examples of projects that used the OWFS. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. It’s not impressive, and barely interesting.

To me, it just seems a lot of the projects that make the rounds on the DIY scene are as impressive as building your own PC (i.e., buy motherboard, memory, HD, case, and assembling them together).

Impressing me takes something unique, that hasn’t been done before, or a good variation on it. Apply technology in a an unusual way or for an unusual purpose. Making an avalanche sensor out of a smoke detector and an AVR. That’d be cool! Devices that have social value, for the handicapped, 3rd world countries, etc.

Should you care about impressing me? Absolutely not. My opinion doesn’t matter one iota to anyone else, nor should it. I’m just stating what it takes for me to go “wow”.

Posted at 1:41 pm on Feb 27th, 2009 by jcwren

it is quite obvious that the reason stuff like this is posted is because some people might think ‘hmm, that is pretty simple but i hadn’t thought of that, i will have a go at implementing the idea myself.’

not everything on here has to be difficult, surely?

Posted at 1:49 pm on Feb 27th, 2009 by dan

Except it’s been done several times, and at least as far back as a year ago.

Posted at 3:24 pm on Feb 27th, 2009 by jcwren

Unfortunately I do have to agree to mostly everyone: This is crap. Impress me: Build a device with 40×2 LCD, which receives RSS feeds directly from the site (thru a DHCP-configured ethernet port) and shows up on a 40×2 LCD, with horizontal and vertical scroll. THIS is a project worthy of Hack-a-day. Sorry pal, this is a beginning, but far from the end

Posted at 10:49 pm on Feb 28th, 2009 by Alexandre, o tabajara