Comments on: Twittering toots, a chair’s perspective

By: punmaster

punmaster — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:50:55 +0000

@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. :)

By: David

David — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:58:24 +0000

It seems that even those silent but deadly ones won’t escape from the chair’s nose…

By: Phrogg

Phrogg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:06:51 +0000

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)
…
…

By: th0mas

th0mas — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:10:12 +0000

“twitter support” is the new LED

By: misha

misha — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:26:38 +0000

this thing is a total failure – the natural gas sensor won’t trigger on pure-air farts from puffy foods such as popcorn.

By: liebesiech

liebesiech — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:14:57 +0000

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.

By: ragnar

ragnar — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:07:04 +0000

outright genius. this made me visit twitter for the very first time, and I will proudly tell my grandchildren, time come.

By: Haku

Haku — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:36:58 +0000

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.

By: punmaster

punmaster — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:44:02 +0000

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.

By: me

me — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:11:53 +0000

seems like an rfid sensor tag would be better suited to the task

By: therian

therian — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:47:51 +0000

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

By: BigD145

BigD145 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:46:25 +0000

@fluxster
you don’t need twitter to do any of that.

By: BigD145

BigD145 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:45:20 +0000

hate twitter

By: anthony

anthony — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:16:05 +0000

To all the people who keep asking for someone to do something useful with twitter…you ever consider that may be impossible?

By: fluxster

fluxster — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:47:08 +0000

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!!!