Project:Notification Board

Project maintained by Solexious, contact via IRC or charlesyarnold@gmail.com

Summary

Prototyping

Installed

This is the board that hangs in the space.

It sends visual and audible notifications to the space, and also publishes notifications to the network: temperature, movement etc

Current version 0.2

Phases

• Phase 1: Allow messages to be displayed on the LED board from IRC.
• Phase 2: Add sounds when the message changes.
• Phase 3: Add strobe beacons.
• Phase 4: Daemon the arduino and allow connection via MQTT, add idle messages.

Moved to separate project/arduino:

*Phase 5: Add temperature, light level and PIR sensors.

*Phase 6: Add i-wire, inc i-buttons.

Code

Arduino Code: [1]

Arduino Lib: [2]

IRC Script: [3]

Change Log

v0.3

• Allow messages upto 162 chars long
• Scroll for messages longer than the screen

v0.2

• Include full ascii support
• Add initText
• Remove update speed delay

v0.1

• Initial proof of concept
• Limit to a-z A-Z and 0-9

Protocol Specification

Sending a message

Currently, messages are sent directly over serial.

They are upto 160 char's long, and can only be from regular ascii. The message is terminated with a line return.

This is a test msg\n

Proposed new protocol

There are 2 types of message:

• Idle - for rolling messages, i.e. temprature, currently playing song, number of irc users. Will keep last value till updated.
• Alert - for one time shown messages, allows sounds

Idle

The settings for idle messages are:

• Message slot [0-5] - (see list below for reserving a slot)
• Time sensitive? [0-1] - If you need to bump the idle message to be the next shown, i.e. currently playing song changes
• Message [up to 21 chars]

Examples: (Substituting STX, ETB and EOT for their respective ascii chars.)

So to send, Temprature: 21.5, you would send:

STX1ETB0ETBTemprature: 21.5EOT

Or to send, Iron Maiden - Prowler, time sensitive:

STX2ETB1ETBIron Maiden - ProwlerEOT

Alert

The settings for alert messages are:

• Message slot [A] - Denotes alerts from idle messages
• Blink [0-1] - Blink the display for more attention
• Sound [0-5] - Set off a sound, see list
• Display timeout - The length of time to display the message for
• Message [up to 21 chars]

Examples: (Substituting STX, ETB and EOT for their respective ascii chars.)

To send, Ping: Solexious, with sound ping and blinking for 5 seconds:

STXAETB1ETB1ETB5ETBPing: SolexiousEOT

Message slots

• 0 - Current Number of users in #london-hack-space
• 1 - Temperature/Humidity
• 2 - Now Playing
• 3 - suggestion: info on tube delays, i.e. http://api.tubeupdates.com/?method=get.status where status != 'good service' (docs at http://tubeupdates.com/documentation/) --AndyE 22:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

see also User:Ms7821 opentfl.co.uk

TfL API (beta) docs [4] [5] (p13) but seems to be currently offline [6].

• 4 -
• 5 -

Sounds

• 0 - None
• 1 - PING.WAV

Feature Requests

• Dynamic font loading
• Individual pixel mapping
• Scrolling to allow for longer messages
• A fortune/motd feature - when the board has been unchanged for a while, display a random message from a file, e.g. 'clean up your own mess', 'shut the fire door when you leave' or 'do not leave the chuck key in the lathe'.