Tannenbaum Ticker, Even Though The Markets Close For Christmas

Maybe we’re a little bitter because we held on to our pumpkin futures well into November, but we’ve got to respect [Nick]’s stock ticker ornament. It’s an Internet-connected Christmas ornament that queries stock prices and displays the change with an RGB LED.

The build uses a Propeller Platform USB and the Propeller E-Net Module to pull stock quotes down from Google. With the attached source, selecting any traded company is easy enough; all that’s needed is to select a company is changing a line in the code. The Propeller pulls the quote every 30 seconds during the trading day, and parses it into a ‘percent changed’ format. The ornament glows red if the change is more than a 4% negative change, green for within 0.2% of open, and blue if more than a 4% positive change.

[Nick] is more of a ‘set it and forget it’ investor, so this ornament is a handy, passive way to keep an eye on his investments. Check out the demo vid after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbyvZmrN8Ns&w=470]

6 thoughts on “Tannenbaum Ticker, Even Though The Markets Close For Christmas

  1. Very cool. It’s always nice seeing a complete package, instead of being tied to a laptop to pull in the data.
    It would be cool to see the device control several ornaments, each one for a different stock :D

    1. Well.. Looks like the XHTML screwed up my comment… here it is in layspeak:
      Red if stockPrice less than 4 %
      Green if stockPrice between -0.2% and 0.2%
      Blue if stockPrice greater than 4 %

      What about:
      stockPrice between -4% and -0.2%
      OR
      stockPrice between 0.2% and 4%
      ??

      1. Hey Hackaday! This is my project;

        The idea is that the color smoothly fades to represent values between the extremes. If the stock were +2%, it would be teal (blending of the green and blue channels). -2% would be orange (Red + Green). Each channel is 8-bit, so there are a lot of possible colors.

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