Comments on: Physical email notification

By: Spuffler

Spuffler — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:22:46 +0000

Sales was yellow, bad edit…..

By: Spuffler

Spuffler — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:21:52 +0000

In December 2008, my boss had made a USB based device for this same purpose, he used RGBY LEDs inside a pingpong ball (to act as a projection screen) and added a PWM circuit to generate a sequence of colors based on who had sent an email.: No email was dark, Jane was green, Joe was blue, Dave was red, and anyone in Sales was green.

Hey, Jack…. if you are out there, they stole your idea!

By: fostering amnesty

fostering amnesty — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:07:57 +0000

I notice every time a simple project comes along that everyone complains about how it’s complexity. Use your imagination, add more to this. Make a mouse-trap project out of this. The key is this gives you the foundation to allow you to do many other things. Especially giving you a good reason to learn python. Give yourself a chance to realize that by dissing simple projects, you demonstrate a lack of ingenuity in creating more complex projects from simple ones.

By: nthcircle

nthcircle — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:03:46 +0000

It’s a fun little project. I built mine into a ghost rider mighty mugg.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44395131@N04/4089290183/

By: noob

noob — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:52:39 +0000

i’m with sam on this. while i might bee pretty handy with the hardware side of things, i just started learning how to program, and i haven’t gotten beyond an arduino yet. so what if this is just an led? the point is this guy interfaced his arduino with his email. it’s posts like this that inspire me to step outside my comfort zone and try new things.
oh, and for those who gripe every time an arduino post appears, if a HaD post is too simple for you, just ignore it. i do the same for ones that are way above my head. deal with it.

By: /dev/null

/dev/null — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:35:48 +0000

I have Asus Xonar D2X, and i use only the analog inputs and outputs, so i have free S/PDIF i/o ports, and optical cable.

My gmail notifier is a simple bash script, who turn on the S/PDIF port.

#!/bin/bash
gmail_login=”****”
gmail_password=”****”
mails=”$(wget –secure-protocol=TLSv1 –timeout=3 -t 1 -q -O – \
https://${gmail_login}:${gmail_password}@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom \
–no-check-certificate | grep ‘fullcount’ \
| sed -e ‘s/.*//;s/.*//’ 2>/dev/null)”
if [ "$mails" -gt "0" ];
then
amixer set ‘IEC958 Loopback’ unmute;
else
amixer set ‘IEC958 Loopback’ mute;
fi
exit

By: tantris

tantris — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:06:29 +0000

@SImon Faulkner:
@ea

mailleds – and many others :P

By: taylor

taylor — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:06:48 +0000

I know I have email when my phone beeps at me. I have the added convenience of being able to easily view said email.

By: stib

stib — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:36:01 +0000

They make shields for arduinos that let it interface with the web don’t they? A better, and only slightly more tricky hack would be for the arduino itself to check the mail server mail and do its little dance when it found new messages. That would actually be useful, because you would still know when you had email without your computer being turned on.
(see http://www.nuelectronics.com/estore/?p=14 for web nabled arduino action)

By: Bostwickenator

Bostwickenator — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:52:07 +0000

Well since no one has a parallel port version I wrote it this morning. It uses the .Net framework and is for x64 you can grab the binary from http://wikisend.com/download/893752/MailCall.zip I don’t actually have a parallel port so if someone wants to test if for me that would be great :D. It pushes all lines high when you have mail.

Note it uses LPT1 so don’t run it if you have a printer on that port.

Reply here if you have questions or comments

By: ea

ea — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:10:24 +0000

make a simple app that sends codes to keyboard to flash all lock LEDs a few times ?
not as bright , but that could be fixed easily

By: zoltan

zoltan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:17:16 +0000

My “email notification system” is a script that rumbles a gamepad a few times (kinda like the vibrate setting on mobile phones)

By: Doom2099

Doom2099 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:05:41 +0000

@Frank McSteez

I know right?…. a bad-ass Arduino for 1 LED.

Sorry I’m hating. For my download physical notifier I used a 3-4$ Picaxe 08m and pyserial.

I haven’t documented my work but i got the idea from http://successlessness.blogspot.com/2008/02/ambient-email-notifier-some-code.html

It’s still a great hack. Shows that python can control anything serial.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:55:06 +0000

This is what I did:

http://circuitgizmos.com/wordpress/?p=127

I made this because there are a lot of times that I’m not in front of my PC to see the screen, but instead behind my PC. There are LEDs on both sides of the little box. I can be notified of email by the flashing lights even if I’m in the other room 20 feet behind my monitor.

I’ve gotten quite used to its convenience.

By: SImon Faulkner

SImon Faulkner — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:41:20 +0000

So, it’s often said – “why use an arduino just to light an LED” – then counter argued “no one has a parralellport anymore”

What IS the simplest way to light an LED from a PC these days?