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Xmas Lights + X10 + Webcam = Fun
Clark Griswold writes "My brother has outdone himself this year, installing 22,000 Christmas Lights on the outside of his house alone. The real beauty is the X10-Webcam Combo that allows you to turn the lights ON and OFF and see the results of your handiwork. It only works between 6pm and 10pm MST, but it's pretty fun to turn the zones on and off (though I'm not so sure the neighbors like it!)."
Oh, this will be useful and a productive use of time once the site gets slammed. Glad I hit it early.
Message for <withheld>: The lights are being switched ON and OFF off too fast - try again in a few minutes ...
There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
So naturally, we posted it on Slashdot. Maybe a limit of switching the lights 3 times withing 5 minutes TOTAL FROM ALL USERS would have been better. Very cool though.
PS: Have we ever slashdotted a X10 system before?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The only way to create a fire-hazard from half-way around the world...Light ON, light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light BOOM! --Sparks everywhere...
Why not fork?
We just slashdotted CHRISTMAS. What next, do the editors engineer a DDoS on GOD HIMSELF?
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Xmas Lights + X10 + Webcam + /. = Lights Out
THANK GOD FOR SLASHDOT! Now the lights are ALL out!
Not only did the server that runs them crash, it took all 22,000 lights with it.
WOOHOO!!!!
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
You Slashdotted the good, old-fashioned Griswold family Christmas!
Do you think the lights are ON or OFF? We will never know what the default was...
Lol. This guy's brother sold him out for the 5 karma points he got for getting his story posted...
Sorry, I should read a bit more closely. Here's the correct link.
At Drivemeinsane.com you can control christmas lights in his living room, turn on the sprinkler, office lights, and send mesages that are said with a text to speach program.
Hacker Media
A local house burned to the gound when its X10 camera system and 22,000 Christmas lights were Slashdotted.....
My computer said to me .... B.S.O.D. !!
I would really feel terrible if this guy has any epileptic neighbors!
I'd be more than glad to purchase their product, IF they did not have their marketing campaign that pops up on almost every site I go to.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
The lights are powered by the wind turbines! Oh man, your self-righteous enviromentalist rant just got SHUT DOWN!
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Proud of what I did,
Brother was envious and
slashdoted my lights
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
... from the Apple "Switch" commercial. She saved Christmas from Windows last year, now she's gotta save it from Slashdot!
Stories about wiring up your house for Christmas -- I don't care how you go about doing it -- should not ever hit Slashdot unless it can be seen from space.
My
Limekiller
I thought X10 gear was only for spying on pretty young women in tight clothes.
I guess those popups were misleading me...
Great going guys! You Slashdotted Christmas.
stroboscope
...
poor neighboors, if they didn't like it before, I wonder how they like the crazy flashes of thousands of slashdotters playing around with the lights
theefer
This wouldn't happen. Russians can't afford the bandwidth.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
.. that all depends on how high up this post gets modded :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
great, now his bandwidth bill will equal his electric bill.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
will get more hits.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
light in his house..he let us (people he knew on a message board) connect to it, and turn it on and off...I wanted to send him threatning messages in morse code..but it didn't switch on and off anywhere near fast enough to do that.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
...but I make it a point to never buy from a company that advertises with half-naked popup ads.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'll buy from whatever company advertises the least expensively.
Well, we can make that two. This guy has a similar setup in his house, but it's all indoor action. Lights on, Lights off etc. It shouldn't be too hard to kill this guy's server either.
"temporarily dismisal from one's work or responsibilities to engage in vast feasting, sexual orgies, and general immorality."
Sounds a lot more fun than "seeking communion with fellow people to honor Jesus through prayer, praise, and joyful feasting"
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The parent post (by an AC) is truly bizarre. You have to wonder what kind of twisted thoughts were running through his head when he composed that. I thought the *BSD-is-dying guy was wacko, but this one takes the cake.
Do you have a "backup nuclear reactor" to feed it though ;-)
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Control all the lights in this guy's house at http://www.drivemeinsane.com/
mogorific carpentry experiments
So what would you use, then?
X10 is the name of the protocol. It's just unfortunate that the domain was bought by a fairly evil marketing company.
If you like Christmas lights, and live in the NJ area you should definitely take a trip to this guy's house. He's been doing it for about 30 years and every year it gets bigger and better. Cars line up and wait up to an hour to drive around the streets near his house. It's not X10, but it's damn cool for a Christmas Lights display.
Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it.
OK, this is really cool, and makes me want to wire my house this way.
And they looked like such a *normal* family.
How are you supposed to know that your neighbors won't do something equally disruptive, if you can't spot the wackos?
Even just 1kW of lights must make it daylight in the living room of the house across the street. Never mind arbitrary blinking, multiple colors, TV crews and tourists driving by...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
You get what you get, and if you don't like it, you go someplace else. If a person's interactive christmas-light-display can't handle thousands of people accessing it at the same time, then most of those people won't get to see it. If slashdot doesn't post the article, then none (or very very very few) of these people will get to see it.
So to answer the question you thought was rhetorical, the point of posting the story was to show as many people as possible what this project was, then to open the topic up for discussion. Enough with this slashdot-owes-me-fast-links crap. Grow up.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Yes, I am quite obviously retarded. Thank you for the well thought-out response. I especially appreciate your disregard for capitalization; it does wonders to the strength of your (already impressive) rebuttal.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.