twitter

150 Articles

Teletype Twitter Frontend

April 7, 2010 by 29 Comments

The folks from NYC Resistor got their hands on a teletype machine and hacked it to monitor Twitter. This eighty-year-old beast bangs out messages that it receives at 45.45 baud. This isn’t a project that turns something into a teletype, but rather finds a different way to feed the machine data. In this case, a python script parses Twitter and sends the data it finds to an Arduino board. The Arduino in turn formats the message into the serial format necessary to communicate with the device. To the left you can see a trend plotter, learn more about both in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Teletype Twitter Frontend” →

Billy Bass With Selectable Clips

January 20, 2010 by 22 Comments

[Will] enjoys giving hacked items as Secret Santa gifts and this year he decided to augment a Billy Bass. These gag items have become a popular hack to use as a prop or to read your Twitter updates to you. Right of the bat he scrapped the original PCB and sent it to the gift’s future recipient as if he were a kidnapper extorting a family. He then set to work replacing the guts with a pair of PIC 18F452 microcontrollers. One uses power transistors to control the movement, the other controls an MP3 that handles the sound clips. The interface has some LEDs for added effect and uses a dial to select each sound clip which is displayed on a 4×20 character LCD.

The project has several voltage headaches as the motors operate at 6v and 4v, the microcontrollers and LCD display at 5v, and the MP3 is looking for 1.5v. That’s for voltages supplying this Frankenstein’d schematic. But he pulled it off, as you can see in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Billy Bass With Selectable Clips” →

Arduino Security With Frickin’ Laser

January 3, 2010 by 15 Comments

[over9k] used his Arduino to set up a laser trip wire. The laser is mounted along side the Arduino, reflects off of a mirror, and shines on a photoresistor that interfaces via a voltage divider. The signal from the voltage divider is monitored for a change when the laser beam is broken. [over9k] set things up so that a webcam snaps a picture of the intruder and Twitters the event for easy notification. Video after the break walks through each of these steps.

This build is a bit rough around the edges but unlike other laser trip wires this keeps all the electronics in one place. The laser interface could be a bit more eloquent, and we’re wondering just how much current it is pulling off of the Arduino pins. But if you’re bored and have this stuff on hand it will be fun to play around with it. Continue reading “Arduino Security With Frickin’ Laser” →

Twitter Based Christmas Ornaments Update

December 31, 2009 by 2 Comments

When we introduced you to the Twitter Christmas tree ornaments, sadly we had very little information about the project. Luckily [Rob] made contact and clued us in on the inner workings. It even turns out we were wrong about the usage of Arduinos! We invite you to check out all the juicy inner workings after the break.
Continue reading “Twitter Based Christmas Ornaments Update” →

(Yet Another) Twitter This Controlling Arduino That

December 27, 2009 by 7 Comments

Christmas may be over, but we still have a couple of cool holiday related hacks for you. One being [Alpay’s] Twitter based interactive Christmas tree ornaments.

We tried to dig up some more information, but it thus far appears a laptop running Processing searches Twitter for specific Christmas related words (like 1337, that’s Christmas-y), sends a buffer to one of three Arduinos which in turn light up a specific ornament. You can check out a live stream here.

For those wanting a bit more information on Arduino and controlling holiday lights, check out [Alpay’s] GE health care version of Twitter lights, or our previous post on controlling Christmas trees, or you might even try [Michael’s] $10 Walmart light controller.

Aural Twitter

December 21, 2009 by 4 Comments

[POTUSCamacho] listens to his @public_timeline rss feed. In part one of his project, he describes creating a bash script in which he uses cURL get his private feed, sed to clean it and eSpeak to output a WAV file. In parts two and three, he goes on to discuss how he created an audio stream (currently down, opens in a new window) of @public_timeline and how he plans on tweeting vocally.