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Send A Message To An LED Sign
An anonymous reader submits "I just got a Pro Lite LED sign today. After a few minutes splicing and wiring up a DB9 to RJ11 connection, and a little fun with python, I've got a script that lets me take input from the web and display it on the sign. Eventually it will have other, more useful, purposes, but I figured I'd let you guys play with it as it is. There's also a log of past messages."
Any chance of sharing the code? ;P
actually it's cable, as signified by its presence on the 24.0.0.0/8 netblock, seems to be holding up (somewhat) so far... I imagine his provider's going to kill his connection for getting himself slashdotted though.
speaking of this topic, i own a LED dotmatrix display for which i could use some specs... it features about 12 characters width of 7x5 [if im not mistaken] red LEDs. the only visible company label is SIGMA, which has not proven very helpful since this is a brand of the very large METRO group who are not exactly helpful to small consumers. the device features a rj-11 input, presumably for getting the time, and an IR port for inputing static data. any information helping me to put my current server load or pfctl logs on the display would be highly welcome.
thnx,
strangeloop
Back in 2000 and 2001, we had a meter high led-sign attached to a wall in the central Helsinki (finland, europe) and anyone with a phone could send a text message to it.
It didn't crash, but the company did.
Let's take a quick look at this line:
:P
There's also a log of past messages.
So... log.asp eh? Windows? Or some silly man running asp under apache? 'Nuff said...
Oh, and I guess maybe it's on some cable modem or DSL provider... that doesn't help.
if you could make it display the wavform of an MP3 player in near real time. But, it didn't sound like that was doable. I'd buy one if it could do that.
24.x.x.x = cable
And DSL... but, yes, this is cable.
Never seen this?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I think this is the first time a LED has been slashdotted.
In year 2000 there was a Finnish company called Wapit. The company building, which was located in central Helsinki, had a huge LED display on its wall. You could send SMS to a certain number and your message appeared on the display.
I also seem to remember some guy who claimed to have a speech synthesiser hooked up to an Amiga in his apartment, and you could talk to his cat.
Ah, here's some contemporary info about it, although the original talk to cat gateway is no longer running and even the Wayback Machine has nothing for the server.
Whether or not it actually spoke to his cat is probably debatable, but it certainly kept a log of messages sent.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Maybe it's the exhilaration of doing something naughty just because you can. I remember signing my school's web server up as an official mirror for the very first Quake3 DemoTEST when it was released four years ago. For about a day we were the only published European mirror, which very quickly brought down (and kept down) the entire public school network in my area.
Of course, for that theory to work, this guy would have to be a) a high school kid, b) stupid like me, and c) somehow using a network connection that he himself was in no way paying for or resposible for.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
You may have a second chance around Christmas Time - I'm thinking of implementing the same concept/idea for my webcam/webcontrolled Christmas lights - see item #3 in what's planned/new for Christmas 2004 ... which if successfully implemented, will make for a additional factor to consider in my Slashdot Effect Analysis
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Well, since that sign has been slashdotted into a smouldering mass of silicon, here is a different sign to play with.
It runs Apache and has survived under heavy load in the past.
Oh, and it's been online for about 4 years.
Have fun.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Well, the AC wasn't the hardware owner, I am. AC was someone messing with me, probably a goon from SA or Ars, where I did post the link. They cut and pasted my test from the SA post.
/. Why did they accept this submission? What does this say about the quality of the editors?
I am confounded as to why they chose to post this, though. Especially since I've submitted many, much better, story ideas only to see them quickly rejected.
It's not technically exceptional, or even really cool to hook a device up to the internet these days. I managed to get my sign up and running in about 10 minutes. Sure, a little fooling around on an internet message board is cool and all, but that's not worthy of
-- Mark Lyon http://www.marklyon.org
It still gets a slow trickle of traffic (with, surprise, a huge spike this morning.) Usually it's just (.Y.) or 8===D up there, but sometimes people put entertaining stuff up there. My favorite in recent history was:
In the first castles, I bet a common mistake was putting the torture room next to the master bedroom. Boy, you're just not going to get the good sleep that way
I probably glance at it every morning getting ready for work, and sometimes it's good for a laugh.
Considering you DID post it to both ars and sa i'd say you're not that innocent.
I set up a similar looking LED sign a couple years ago at work and we have an internal webserver that hosts the web interface to it (using Apache for Win32). The CGI interface is written in Perl, using a perl module (that I also wrote) that provides an minimal Perl API for the sign.
When a new line of text is submitted to the sign, the CGI script also sends the text to our office IRC channel via a separate Perl IRC bot, so you don't have to be sitting within visible range of the sign in order to enjoy it.
Full Perl source, a sample POD text output, and some pictures and screen snapshots are all available online on my website. (Note that no actual public interface to my LED sign setup is provided.)
Don't waste those cycles! Put them to use! http://www.distributed.net/