Twittering Toots, A Chair’s Perspective

twit

We might have to add a category of “stuff made to twitter”. The latest installment is an office chair that twitters whenever it gets farted on. The author has a smart sounding description as to why he decided to make this, and he has a pretty good point about twittering interrupting the things you’re twittering about, but it all boils down to the fact that he wants to twitter his farts. We can’t say that we didn’t expect something along these lines. He has mounted a natural gas sensor in his chair, along with a squidbee wireless transceiver. You can download all the code as well as see the construction in the instructable. You can also follow his flatulent adventures on the twitter account of the office chair.

28 thoughts on “Twittering Toots, A Chair’s Perspective

  1. I was at the dorkbot-nyc last month, where they had a talk on the lilypad zigbee . . . my buddy and I decided if we were ever to make a project with it, it would likely be a twittering underwear which reports the temperature and relative humidity. This would be an excellent addition to these sensors.

    I don’t mind the idea of twitter (a central place for tiny updates and tracking) so much as the stupid name. Its amazing its gained so much acceptance despite it.

  2. Just wait until the Obama administration passes global warming legislation. He’ll start getting a tax bill for his methane emissions, since he’s conveniently documented them.

  3. this totally needs a three axis accelerometer and pressure sensor. it could guess your weight when you sat down, and if you don’t move for a long time, it’ll ask if anyone can come poke you to ensure you’re alive.

    the sensors also allow for it to make snide remarks such as “Careful, fatso” each time you tip back.

    props to the original designer.

  4. To all those who post negative comments on hackaday (to the tune of “this isn’t a hack” and “twitter sucks”), I’d just like to point out that when someone subscribes to someone else’s twitter feed, they *want* to hear what that person has to say.

    Nobody wants to hear your negative comments here. So stop bitching, bitches.

    (Yes, I know I just added myself to that group by putting this here. :) )

  5. I’m also getting fed up with the world’s apparent obsession with twitter.

    I wouldn’t be suprised if some “everyone look at me!” type person rigs up a heartrate monitor to tweet ever heartbeat, if it hasn’t already been done.

  6. I agree with daryl…have a pressure sensor under a doormat/carpet to trigger, if a weight is 50 lbs or more, twitter your system to activate wireless webcam at door to feed video to lcd and remote wireless mike/speaker so you don’t have to leave your chair to see who it is…a lot better than measuring/making a fart chart!!!

  7. that why I dislike Audrino. before Audrino people had to learn micro controller and during learning stage they get some useful ideas and implement it in useful projects instead of silly farts counter or blinking leds

  8. Every time I see something like this, i say to myself, “There’s no way hackaday will accept anything worse then this, so maybe the worst is behind me.” Then, on a regular basis, I am proven very wrong. I’m not ripping on hackaday, because overall, it has a ton of good stuff. But seriously. Every time I think society has outgrown its pathetic twitter fetish, more shit like this pops up to tell me that it is only getting worse. So please, feel free to make a “stuff that twitters” category, but only if you plan to include a greasemonkey script that silently removes any entry tagged with it. :P

    P.S. I agree with [therian]. The Audrino may have lowered the barriers to entry for the microcontroller scene, but it has also lowered its collective IQ.

  9. I don’t like the elitist attitude towards microcontroller programming – in lumping everyone in the “make some crap that’ll tweet” group you’re also including those who do have good ideas but don’t have the knowledge to program a microcontroller from the ground up.

    I’ve recently started working with PICAXE’s and think they’re wonderful chips, my first project with one is a bike light setup, sure you may think it could be done with a single switch or two but my setup will include a rear light, lights on the pegs of the wheel axles and a front light made using 300 3mm LEDs pulling 24 watts. The PICAXE 18X gives me the ability to use 4 input switches to easily set the brightness level of the front light (PWM rocks) and the side+back lights (including a highbeam that turns on all 300 LEDs), something I couldn’t have easily achieved with just switches alone.

    The next big project I want to do with a PICAXE is a DIY thermal imaging device using a thermopile heat sensor mounted on two servos for X-Y scanning, which the PICAXE has the control mechanism for the sensor & servos built-in, along with serial out for dumping data to a PC for saving pixel information & creating an image out of it.

    So please don’t dismiss all Arduino/PICAXE type users in the same category – there are good ideas out there.

  10. Even this specific example looks not very useful in the first place, it is a very good example of integrating different parts to a working “thing”. This could easily be used to do other types of measurements (temperature, wind speed etc.) and display the values on a web page.

  11. I’m waiting for this thing to malfunction, or for him to develop a natural gas leak in his home.

    [name] broke wind (about 5 seconds ago)
    [name] broke wind (about 6 seconds ago)
    [name] broke wind (about 7 seconds ago)
    [name] broke wind (about 8 seconds ago)

  12. @Haku

    I certainly didn’t mean to go riping on beginners. New minds and ideas are always good, especially here. I’m just a little tired of the audrino’s overinflated popularity and the bulk of “meh” protects that seem to go along with it. But nothing personal. Sorry if I offended anyone. :)

Leave a Reply to anthonyCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.