USB Menorah

Fiver-rah writes "There's USB Christmas trees; lame acrylic things with LED lights that are powered by your computer. It's an amusing idea, but it doesn't really take advantage of being attached to a computer. Enter the USB Menorah. It can correctly calculate the dates of Hannukah for at least the next few thousand years (or any historical date back to 2 B.C.E.). As well as 'lighting' the candles based on when the sunsets (I set the default geography for San Francisco/Berkeley, but you can enter any latitude/longitude and (assuming you don't live too close to the arctic circle) it will be correct to within a few minutes. Furthermore, the shamas (candle you use to light the other candles) can blink out any morse-code message you want--it'll convert the words to morse code for you! And you can even put it into Kwanzaa mode! Each candle can take three different colors (Red, Green & Yellow), allowing you to do some animation. Software is a GPL command line program for Mac OS X. Basically only the USB communication stuff needs to be ported for other OS's. Delcom (the manufacturer of the USB interface chip) supplies drivers for Windows, and a few people have written Linux drivers, so it wouldn't be too hard for a motivated individual."

Comments

Re:Judging from the pictures....

[Savatte]

as long as all 8 candles are at the same elevation, and the Shamash (the candle you use to light the others is higher), it's all kosher.

Unfortunately it does not fulfill the requirement

[DJStealth]

(For those who are interested)

Although, most people who use this would probably know that this should not be intended to replace the actual lighting of a menorah.

In order to fulfill the religious requirement of lighting the menorah for the 8 nights of Chanukah, you need to use either candles or olive oil (to burn). (the other requirement is that all the candles except for the one used to light the others, must be at the same height)

Re:Judging from the pictures....

[Otter]

I think it's that the candles need to be in a straight line at the same elevation with the shamash out of line in any axis. But, yes, you're essentially right.

The key word is candles, though, or preferably olive oil. LED's don't count as fire even for prohibitions against lighting fires on the sabbath or similar things and are certainly subotimal for candles.

Re:USB toothbrush

[Captain Nitpick]

Yes, anything needing more than 500mA of power.

Amps are for measuring current. You want watts.

Given that USB's power is at 5V DC, that comes out to 2.5W of power.