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

Amazing

[jshark]

An article appears on /. and I get to the site before it gets /.'ed. Must be the season.

Re:lame acrylic things?

[Phosphor3k]

How is a Xmas tree religous in any way? Last time I went to church it had nothing to do with the celebration of Christ's birth. Perhaps if he knocked a USB powered Advent wreath or Nativity set you might have something to get uppity about. The tree and gift giving crap is purely secular, however.

Re:Saddam would love one of these

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember: the tinfoil hat only works if you put the shiny side of the foil on the OUTSIDE.

HTH!

Re:Why 2BCE?

[panurge]

Shock horror. Genuinely informative responses to a query posted on /.

Thanks to the people who took the trouble to respond.