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Ask HN: Turning my RaspberryPi into my Startups Notice Board.
So, I'm looking for "clever" incredibly geeky ways of hacking with my RaspberryPi (when it arrives).
There are some metrics and events that I'm tracking on my website and I'm currently looking for a weekend project to alert me in my office when some of these events occur.
Some of the events are:
- New User Sign up.
- Site unreachable for 1 minute.
- Purchase
- Help Message Sent
Now, the way that I plan on alerting myself of some of these events has to be "awesomely-cool". So i'm looking to some of the more "analogue" ways. I don't plan on connecting the device up to a monitor idenfinitely, and would like something like a "Air Horn" siren for example, if my site is down.
Do you think this would be possible? I could pick up a programmable USB power socket, but I can't really think of any other devices that I could connect via USB that would be easily programmable.
I don't want to bite the bullet and just build something that works through a monitor, cause I would like the "analogue" feel to whatever I first build.
Awesome-sauce is a required for this project! So if it uses a monitor, it's out!
- noonespecial 15y agoRasPis have GPIO pins. With even the most basic soldering and the simplest circuit, you can use a relay to turn on low voltage devices like blinkenlights or buzzers. A tiny bit of extra study will get you motors and servos. Flipping a bit on a GPIO is as simple as echo-ing a 1 or 0 to a file in dev. Awesome is made of solder, my friend.
- chrisacky 15y agoThey have two GPIO pins right? But I can still only flip it to either on or off. So while it would be useful for something like turning on a single light, I'm not sure how I could use the GPIO pins to send say a number of users currently subscribed or something similar?
- soapdog 15y agoyou can hook the RasPi with an Arduino and use the gazilions libraries and shields.... I recommend an flip display like those in airports for your sign ups. A traffic light for server monitoring. A translucent display with a question mark that is illuminated by an RGB led when the help message is sent...
- chrisacky 15y agoI love that idea. I wonder if I could get an "Airport Sign" anywhere. I thought about hooking up the RasPi to an Arduino, but then did it not just defeat the purpose of using a RasPi and not going straight to Arduino. I like the traffic light idea too. I could probaby pop into a CNC/CAD machine sculpting place to create a pretty decent chasis for a custom light box. While on the topic however, do you know how I might find one of those "flip displays"?