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."

Comments

The sign of a slashdotting

[tannhaus]

Wow..didn't take long to slashdot that sucker into oblivion

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[Einer2]

That's a pity. I wanted to add a "First Post" scrolling LED message...

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[jonatanw]

well, it's coded in ASP wich really doesn't make things better.. ;)

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[sg_oneill]

Lets see.

Half the worlds geeks visiting simultaneously a website having its bandwidth narrowed to a 9.6k serial pipe with the repeated message "j00 b33n ownz3d by goatse LOL". Let me think...

hmm...

This is why we cant have nice things. :(

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[swordfishBob]

So I assume the display now shows: /.'d

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pity. I wanted to add a "First Post" scrolling LED message...

What about the scrolling text "You failed it?"

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[xmas2003]

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

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I just don't understand why people use the "free" 10-user version of IIS to host publicly acessible websites. Here's a clue, guys!

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[TLSPRWR]

You can't have nice things and show them off to potential idiots.

Would you walk down New York's main drag yelling out about your brand new gold plated diamond encrusted Rolex?

Re:The sign of a slashdotting

[SpeedBump0619]

I was going to go with:

"Shall we play a game?"

Imagine...

[mdrejhon]

Just think of the possibilities with the Times Square billboard! :D

Re:Imagine...

[JabberWokky]

A beowulf cluster of these things!!
No, seriously!! We could...uhh....
*runs*
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

With a beowulf cluster of LED signs, it's unlikely to be pitch black. Thus it can be taken seriously as an anti-grue measure.

--
Evan "Or a Vin Disel counter-measure"

Re:Imagine...

[hagardtroll]

Netscape used to have one of these. You could send a message to their developers. They also had a web cam to view the messages. People were always posting their phone numbers, expecting the developers to call them.

Hah

[lancomandr]

Before the story went public....I input to the sign "You're about to get RAPED by slashdot!" Now the story is public. No more website.

Re:Hah

[__aavhli5779]

This may get modded down, but the guy who posted the article is an utter moron.

He's already posted this link on two message boards (Ars Technica and Something Awful), to be informed that his copy of IIS Personal Web Server, included with Windows, which allows a maximum of 5 connections, couldn't stand up to the onslaught.

Evidently, he decided posting it on Slashdot was a logical next step.

Re:Hah

[Fjord]

Maybe he's a forum troll.

Re:Hah

[another_henry]

Notice how the submitter was anonymous... I don't think it was the same guy as the sign owner himself.

Chance?

[ScribeOfTheNile]

Any chance of sharing the code? ;P

Re:Chance?

[marklyon]

I'm the guy running the sign. I didn't intend for it to be posted here, but I'll be happy to point you in the right direction if you want to set up your own sign. Just don't let Clint on ArsTechnica know your IP address. He'll post it on /.

For the sign, I'm using a Pro Lite PL-M2014R. It's connected with an RJ11 cable that I spliced a DB9 connector on. I'm running a bit of Python which opens the port and writes the information to the sign. All the information you need is available at: http://wls.wwco.com/ledsigns/prolite/

Re:Chance?

[marklyon]

I'm also submitting back my windows source so that non-linux users can also control their signs.

Re:Chance?

[wayne530]

Here is some additional information as well:
Here is some additional information as well. And another link to a live sign. Go wild :)

Re:Chance?

[SeanAhern]

If you think it would make any difference, you might try emailing timothy (or daddypants@slashdot.org) and see if they'll remove the link.

Just a thought...

That's a good idea

[HiQ]

Maybe you can use the smoke that's coming from your computer right now as a screen for looking at the Venus transit. You won't be using that for a while I guess.

Re:That's a good idea

[joshuaobrien]

Maybe you can use the smoke that's coming from your computer right now as a screen for looking at the Venus transit.

Or to implement a Native American wireless communication protocol...

Re:That's a good idea

[AKnightCowboy]

If his computer can't handle the 5 simultaneous connections IIS Personal Web Server allows then he should really reconsider running Windows period.

Re:That's a good idea

[ari_j]

Indian. I'm as native here as they are, stop being PC. If you don't know which group of Indians I'm talking about, just ask me "Dots or feathers?"

This will probably get modded down as a troll, and it doesn't need to be said. I'm just trying out a new whiskey and being cantankerous about my views on political correctness and how it's ruining the world. :)

That was fast...

[freitasm]

I saw the post without any replies. Tried it and it was gone... That was fast.

Re:That was fast...

[freitasm]

Good point... But I'm not in front of /. all day, and the RSS can only refresh every 60 minutes otherwise risking getting banned. How many times will I miss the 20 minutes window?

Darn..

[Insurgent2]

The Quake dudes on your segment are gonna be pissed!

i just want to post one message on the sign

[shaark78]

slashdotted

Re:i just want to post one message on the sign

[loyalsonofrutgers]

I'd go for the more elegant "pwned"

its loading for me

[packeteer]

well at least it loaded the background color... btw its blue... i think thats as far as anyone will get

Re:its loading for me

[psoriac]

Seeing as how it's (was?) an IIS server, a blue background is rather appropriate.

Was the text white, by any chance?

Re:its loading for me

[unixbugs]

wouldnt load for me. 140th post or so though.

dont forget to grep tits *;

connection speed..?

[Polkyb]

After a few minutes splicing and wiring up a DB9 to RJ11 connection

Have you thought of trying ethernet...? I hear it's a bit quicker than a serial connection and may help prevent the /. effect...

;-)

Re:connection speed..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise use a smart serial-to-ethernet converter like the one at:

http://www.multenet.com/demo/webcam.html
http:/ /www.sanpeople.com/webcam/camframe.html

"Using an EtherPAD, SAN People have connected a LCD Electronic display to the Internet. The EtherPAD is connected to the serial port of the LCD display and, via an ISP, to the Internet. Using the SAN People scripting language, SANscript, a web page was written allowing full control of this display. This web page was then loaded onto the EtherPAD allowing messages to be set from anywhere in the world.
Monitoring the LCD display is a web-cam. Users can thus verify that their message sent via the EtherPAD to the Display unit actually appears."

Re:connection speed..?

[cjsnell]

What would be even cooler is an 802.11b-based serial-to-ethernet converter, with *nix drivers. The EtherPAD, unfortunately, appears to be win32-only. :(

Chris

Fortunate

[NemesisStar]

You're lucky goatse is no more. What would your mother say if she decided to see what internet site was so important for you to enshrine on a LED board?

Re:Fortunate

[mikeb39]

Goatse no more? What rock have you been hiding under?

It lives at http://www.goatse.ca now! Stare into it once more...

Re:Fortunate

[byolinux]

Also at goat.cx - gotta love the spirit of that place

Re:Fortunate

[wo1verin3]

don't forget the *.x2e.org redirect! You can go to slashdot.x2e.org and it shows a thumbnail of the goatman... (not hyperlinked on purpose)

Excuse me, but ...

[krumms]

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.

Are you FUCKING INSANE?

Re:Excuse me, but ...

[xsupergr0verx]

Yeah, that's the equivalent to a kick me sign on his back.

Actually, closer to the sign Bruce Willis wore briefly in Harlem in Die Hard 3...

Re:Excuse me, but ...

[phrasebook]

What's the problem? Why do people keep talking about the /. effect? Someone's computer/connection can't respond to all the requests, so you wait a little while and view it later if you're still interested. Wow. Hilarious.

Re:Excuse me, but ...

[Tokerat]

It's called TOS, or terms of service. This guy is going to get an angry call from his cable provider come 9AM, and they'll probably take the wire down right off his house lol

As for the /. effect, it can last for a long time. As long as that story is on the front page.

Hell, I post an occational image on Fark and you should see the logfiles go apeshit

Re:Excuse me, but ...

[TheRagingTowel]

This guy is not insane, he's just an idiot probably. Thinking of posting this on slashdot...
The guy who is REALLY insane is the editor who allowed this to be on slashdot front page.

Re:Excuse me, but ...

[jeremyp]

Yes. Is it News? Does it Matter? Woo hoo, I've got a web server where you can type stuff in and have it displayed. That's never been done before.

My theory is the editors thought he was an idiot and decided to teach him a lesson. Unfortunately, they have probably toasted the internet connections of everybody else on the same bit of cable. Can you say "contention"?

Been said before, will be said again:

[BodyCount07]

Why on earth would you submit your own website when you know it will go down in a matter of seconds? Authors should have to start proving some sort of minimal bandwidth requirement before submitting their own site. I'm tired of people hosting web pages on their home DSL lines.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[runderwo]

I'm tired of people hosting web pages on their home DSL lines.

As opposed to paying per the GB xfer for enterprise hosting and sending a slashdotting over there instead?

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[NotWulfen]

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.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[edunbar93]

That's nothing. You should see the wankers trying to sell hosting space on their home DSL lines. We get calls from their customers all the time about how they want the DNS hosting to change every 2.5 days with the DHCP changes.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[harlows_monkeys]

Why on earth would you submit your own website when you know it will go down in a matter of seconds?

It's worse...check the IP address. It's on cable, and it almost certainly violates the TOS to run a web server there. So, not only did it go down right away, it might stay down permanently, depending on how annoyed the cable company is.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[mcbridematt]

I don't know about every web host, but any cheap arse virtual host in a decent datacentre should be able to handle it... for a while.

The person who submitted this story is one stupid idiot. Heck, even hosting a mirror in ISP user webspace would be better.

* Disclaimer: I operate a virtual webhost in a "decent colo", more specifically, The Planet

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[OblongPlatypus]

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.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[Gorgeous Si]

Why on earth would you submit your own website when you know it will go down in a matter of seconds?

I've been thinking a bit about this lately. What if you could set up a webserver to act like a bittorrent seed. That way, when there's normal use people would just connect to the seed/server, then under load the bandwidth becomes distributed across all users.

It's a crazy idea, and some thought would need to be put in for dynamic pages ... but it just might work.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[way2trivial]

I had a similar idea once, here was the result

way2trivial's Recent Submissions
How do you fix the slashdot effect? Wed Jan 14, '04 02:09 PM Rejected

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[KGIS]

I don't think that this would work as well as it seems at first glance. In order for bittorrent to be effective you need to have enough people with active connections to download from. When downloading a web page you would have many smaller connections that would not be active for very long. Also, you would still need a server that can handle all of the connections so that the software knows where it can go to get the files it needs.
It might be possible but it would have to significantly different than bittorrent if it was to work effectively.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[jsebrech]

You'd have to somehow present all the files on the server as one big file, possibly with different areas of the superfile assigned to the different files, so you could make changes and still have them reflected. People would download the first block of the superfile, see what block they needed next, and request that from the network, with other blocks depending on availability being loaded in the background.

I doubt you could do it as a modification of bittorrent though. Bittorrent does not tolerate any changes to something you're hosting on a torrent stream. Any solution would have to contain the ability to compare checksums for some peer hosting a block with that of the tracker, and see if the block was updated.

Re:Been said before, will be said again:

[jsebrech]

It's not just bandwidth. Even sites with tons of bandwidth can go down easily if they're dynamic. If you're going to get slashdotted, your site should be entirely static, with no images/movies/plugins loading from the main page, and if you must have images or movies, wrap them all up in a torrent and host them that way.

Anyone on the Web can write on your sign?

[shanen]

Either you're a VERY brave man or this thing is locked in a closet somewhere. If it's visible from the street, you're in a heap of trouble, boy.

What goes around ...

[torpor]

... comes around.

In the early days of the web, back when men were men and browsers were something nobody really wanted to write, there was a webcam ... before there were webcams ... at Netscape ... before there were dot-com crashes ... that was powered by a CGI script ... before there was web application services (tm IBM^M^M^MMicrosoft^M^M^M^M^M^M^M^M^MSCO) ... that was pointed (the webcam, stay with me) ... at an ...

LED sign. To which you could send your own messages, laugh while your coffee and TSP reports get cold, and marvel at the 'wonders of that modern Internet thingie'.

Now any punk with a screwdriver and half a tab key can hack their own 15 minutes of signage ... I'm just ... not ... inspired by it all any more.

So I'm not even gonna visit the link.

Re:What goes around ...

[Barbarian]

TPS reports, not TSP. Standing for "Total Piece of Shit."

Re:What goes around ...

[nkh]

Jealous?

Re:What goes around ...

[torpor]

Good lord no. Bored.

This /. article is so 1993.

Re:What goes around ...

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM^M^M^MMicrosoft^M^M^M^M^M^M^M^M^MSCO

Umm... ^M is Carriage Return. Did you mean ^H?

Re:What goes around ...

[MartinB]

In the early days of the web, there was a webcam that was pointed at an LED sign. To which you could send your own messages, laugh while your coffee and TSP reports get cold, and marvel at the 'wonders of that modern Internet thingie'.

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.

Re:What goes around ...

[MartinB]

This being back in 94 or so when I saw it. Blimey, have I been online that long?

Re:What goes around ...

[torpor]

10 years is not a long time.

Re:What goes around ...

[jolshefsky]

... laugh while your coffee and TSP reports get cold ...

Do you really mean Tandy Service Plans? I think you mean TPS--and while I'm here, I noticed you didn't put a cover sheet on yours. Did you get the memo? ...

AYB...

[zonix]

Yeah, it was just after I posted the "All your base ..." message. :-)

Neat!

z

Re:AYB...

[xsupergr0verx]

Your server has no chance to survive make your time. Ha ha ha ha ha...

Brave!!

[xgecko]

You're letting us play with your LED, that's brave!! Can you say STD (Slashdot Transmited Disease)

Original /.ing error code

[frs_rbl]

Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\sendmessage.py", line 13, in ? tty=SerialPort("COM1", 1000, 9600) File "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\SerialPort_win.py", line 117, in __init__ raise SerialPortException('Unable to open port') SerialPort_win.SerialPortException: Unable to open port Exception exceptions.AttributeError: in > ignored

I suppose he's busy debugging now

Re:Original /.ing error code

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that's the result of him frantically cutting the serial cable with a butter knife.

Famous last words

[GammaTau]

Slashdot hits you. You die. --More--

Re:Famous last words

[Borg453b]

Earlier that day:

You apply LED to internet connection.
You begind praying to Slashdot for attention.
You finish your prayer. You feel that slashdot is displeased.
The LED is cursed. You cannot disconnect it from the internet.
The voice of slashdot booms: "Thou hast angered me."

Re:Famous last words

[suicideartist]

i'm pretty sure the slashdot effect is more like turning undead for high level clerics, anything under a certain level just explodes once it gets within range.

Re:w0w (if it were still the 80's)

[Goalie_Ca]

Maybe that explains him hosting this on slashdot. Ya know, scipt kiddies just aren't the same these days. Back in my day, we knew not to do something this stupid!

Could be worse

[xsupergr0verx]

At least he didn't code it into his spiffy new Nokia phone and has to wave his arm for the next 8 hours to display our messages.

Re:Could be worse

[wo1verin3]

Here. Read.

The last message was ...

[zonix]

"Here comes /."

No kidding! :-)

z

Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a FREE UNIVERSE, buddy. If you don't like it, eat shit and DIE. I'll submit on 2600 baud if I so fucking like.

Re:Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[ForestGrump]

troll, i thought this post was fucking hillarious!
I got a good laugh out of it.

Damnit, while i'm waiint for the 20 second thing...I WANT MOD POINTS! NOW!

Re:Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[AKnightCowboy]

This is a FREE UNIVERSE, buddy. If you don't like it, eat shit and DIE. I'll submit on 2600 baud if I so fucking like.

2600 baud huh? You must've done a little too much LDS during the late 80's to remember having a 2600 baud modem.

Re:Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[jlusk4]

Doh! (Pot, kettle, black.) (Or did you really mean the Mormon Church? I guess they *can* be a little thought-warping :).

John.

Re:Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[Idarubicin]

2600 baud huh? You must've done a little too much LDS during the late 80's to remember having a 2600 baud modem.

2600? That's nothing.

I can turn mine up to eleven.

Re:Who, in the BLUE HELL, are you?

[p_tweak]

You must've done a little too much LDS during the late 80's to remember having a 2600 baud modem.
Yeah, those Mormons will really screw a guy up.

Re:Just one thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

What connection is that one on? DSL?

24.x.x.x = cable

This specific block is owned by
Cablelynx NETIP-WEHCO-BLK-2 (NET-24-204-80-0-1)
24.204.80.0 - 24.204.99.255

Many cable users can actually define their own IP address.

Here's the site

[NemesisStar]

Well seeings how I think I was one of the only people to be able to load it up before it went down, here is what was on the site. This is pretty much it (very simple interface), the only thing you can't see here are "Send Now" and "blank sign" buttons and a dark blue background.

Leave a Scrolling Message for Mark
You can leave a message on the scrolling message board for Mark, or see the log of messages already left.

This will replace the existing message of:

[Tue 02:55 24.5.54.115]
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Below are some simple commands you can use. Insert the command text where you want the command result to be. Hey folks, this isn't XHTML. If you want to use a tag, please make sure it's in all caps or it doesn't work.

Graphic Blocks
There are 26 reprogramable graphic blocks.
<BA> Telephone <BB> Glasses <BC> Tap <BD> Rocket <BE> Monster
<BF> Key <BG> Shirt <BH> Helicopter <BI> Car <BJ> Tank
<BK> House <BL> Teapot <BM> Knife & Fork <BN> Duck <BO> Motorcycle
<BP> Bicycle <BQ> Crown <BR> Sweet Heart <BS> Arrow Right <BT> Arrow Left
<BU> Arrow Down-Left <BV> Arrow Up-Left <BW> Mug of Beer <BX> Chair <BY> High-heeled Shoes

Colors
There are 26 color modes.
<CA> Dim Red <CB> Red <CC> Bright Red
<CD> Orange <CE> Bright Orange <CF> Light Yellow
<CG> Yellow <CH> Bright Yellow <CI> Lime
<CJ> Dim Lime <CK> Bright Lime <CL> Bright Green
<CM> Green <CN> Dim Green <CO> Yellow/Green/Red
<CP> Rainbow (Default) <CQ> Red/Green 3D <CR> Red/Yellow 3D
<CS> Green/Red 3D <CT> Green/Yellow 3D <CU> Green on Red
<CV> Red on Green <CW> Orange on Green 3D <CX> Lime on Red 3D
<CY> Green on Red 3D <CZ> Red on Green 3D

Note:
Some of these color combinations look so bad that they should require a permit.

Character Sizes
<SA> Normal (Default) <SE> Flashing Normal
<SB> Bold (Wide) <SF> Flashing Bold (Wide)
<SC> Italic <SG> Flashing Italic
<SD> Bold Italic (Wide) <SH> Flashing Bold Italic (Wide)

Display Functions
<FA> AUTO
Random color & presentation <FB> OPEN
<-- Open from Center --> <FC> COVER
<-- Covers Text --> <FD> APPEAR
Instantly replaces text <FE> CYCLING
Rolling Colors
<FF> CLOSE <--
Blank screen right to left <FG> CLOSE -->
Blank screen left to right <FH> CLOSE --><--
Blank screen outter to center <FI> SCROLL UP
Scroll up from bottom <FJ> SCROLL DOWN
Scroll down from top
<FK> OVERLAP
Two layers slide together to form text <FL> STACKING
Falling dots form text <FM> COMIC 1
PacMan <FN> COMIC 2
Random creature walking
<FP> PAUSE
Short delay of motion <FQ> SLEEP
Blank screen until the next timer activates <FR> RANDOM
Random dots appear forming text <FS> SHIFT <--
Roll message right to left (Default) <FT> TIME/DATE
Show time and date, no choice of formatting
<FU> MAGIC
Change text color each time <FV> THANK YOU
Cursive "Thank you" <FW> WELCOME
Cursive "Welcome" <FX> SPEED 1 <FY> SPEED 2
Jittery

Re:Here's the site

[kiwirob]

Last seen on the LED screen before it went down...

<blink>Free Porn Here</blink>
<blink>Penis Enlargement Pills Here</blink>
<blink>Reduce Debt with free $10,000 Credit Card Now</blink>

Re:Here's the site

[razmaspaz]

Man if getting an LED screen gets you free porn and a bigger penis...I want one.

Re:Here's the site

[jeff67]

Now before "You can leave a message...", it says in yellow:

Good morning Slashdot users. Someone thought it'd be cute to link to me, which isn't a good idea with the 10 user version of IIS. Sorry for the 403.9's. For more information about my setup, go to ArsTechnica or SomethingAwful.

I hope he doesnt have kids.....

[Jeff Benjamin]

It was only a matter of time before some clever slashdotter figured out how to make the leds light up to look like the goatse man.

Re:I hope he doesnt have kids.....

[LiquidCoooled]

its perfectly feasible unfortunately.

Sourceforge project anyone?

image -> LED display?

instructions here

help needed

[DrStrangeLoop]

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

Re:help needed

[Max Romantschuk]

i own a LED dotmatrix display - Dude, I totally read that as "i own a LED dominatrix display"...

The real question is: What would a LED dominatrix display actually be? ;)

Re:help needed

[shigelojoe]

Pretty much the same thing as an LED display except with a ballgag and a whip.

Mirror anyone?

[craigmarshall]

Doesn't ANYONE have a mirror?!

Re:Mirror anyone?

[ocelotbob]

Mirror Available Here

Re:Mirror anyone?

[oPless]

What, and have the messages come out backwards ?

Here's a useful purpose...

[MonkeyBot]

I've always wanted to get an LED sign for the back of my car. Yours fixes the problem that I had with actually buying one. Now, I could just edit the Unix "fortune" program to quip random, witty, profane statements to drivers that piss me off rather than having to type the whole statement in. Thanks.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[ballpoint]

I want one in the front of my car with a mirror image of the text.

For a while I have used a notebook to display an animated gif with the mirror image of the traffic signs for 'End of speed limit 70km/h' and 'Speed limit 90km/h' to slow drivers in front of me who stubbornly insist on driving 60km/h where 90km/h is allowed (and 100km/h is tolerated).

Another worthwhile text is 'Slower traffic keep right'.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[RealUlli]

Have it read:

Speed trap ahead - vehicles going too slow will be fined.

Cheers, Ulli

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[ledow]

I dunno how true this is or where it applies, but I'm pretty sure that here in the UK, having any sort of moving display showing on a vehicle is illegal.

Otherwise, don't you think that all these advertisers would have 50-foot-high Plasma screens driving along the motorways advertising their wares?

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[Roofus]

I thought of that too once. Then I did a search at the USPTO and found that idea had already been patented. I'd search for a link now, but I don't have time before work.

I think using an LCD would get around that though, as I did a search for that and came up with nothing.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[markxz]

I dunno how true this is or where it applies, but I'm pretty sure that here in the UK, having any sort of moving display showing on a vehicle is illegal.

Many busses have changing displays showing where they are going (one destination and many route points cycling).

Some of the newer busses have cloth signs which are changed automatically. (the driver selects the destination and it slowly moves through to the right destination). It realy freeked me out the first time I saw the sign changing on a moving bus.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[netringer]

I've always wanted to get an LED sign for the back of my car.

There's prior art in one of he Dean Martin as Matt Helm movies. It wasn't LED, it was an animated movie effect scrolling metal framed sign that popped up out of the trunk. There were no LEDs in the 1960's.

The funniest message the writers could come up with was, "If you can read this, you're too close." as he was being chased by the bad guys.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[Vudu Child]

In Boston, MA, USA there are taxi cabs with changing LED ads on the roof. They will even display sports scores.

Re:Here's a useful purpose...

[ryanwright]

One problem: The people who drive 10 under the limit in the far left lane are the same people who don't use their rear view mirrors. So they'd never see your sign.

We did this with mobile phones and text messages

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

A safe way to run IIS

[Anonymous Coward]

this guy has figured it out....the only safe way to run IIS is to make sure your bandwidth is so flooded that a hacker couldn't stay connected long enough to do anything.

Re:Freecache

[Sneeka2]

No, it wouldn't have saved him, you insensitive clod. RTFA!

Please note that you cannot submit a whole site to FreeCache as in http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/ This will not work as only index.html will be cached. You have to prefix every item that you want to have cached seperately.

Also it wouldn't have done much good for a CGI script, now would it?

Want to know why it's /.'ed?

[HellKnite]

Let's take a quick look at this line:

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. :P

This would be sweet if

[ahfoo]

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.

Re:This would be sweet if

[sploo22]

Doesn't sound too hard. You just code up a simple XMMS plugin that converts the volume/spectrum info to the appropriate series of characters. For the spectrum analyzer, it would have to reprogram the graphics blocks at each "frame" it gets. The only problem would be latency, so you might not be able to get a very smooth picture.

Re:This would be sweet if

[gnu-generation-one]

"This would be sweet if if you could make it display the wavform of an MP3 player in near real time"

Would be easier to do that in hardware directly -- a waveform is just a bucket-brigade delay chip, then sending each time-sample to bar-graph chip that drives one of 10 LED outputs. Put it all in an array and feed in an analog audio signal, no computers needed..

Re:This would be sweet if

[TLSPRWR]

I have a small LCDCrystalfontz screen (20x4 or something like that), that with LCDriver (I think that's the right one) you can use Winamp to display the titles onscreen and even do waveforms, along with a slew of other things. It's not as big or as potentially pretty as that might be, but.. It's sweet none-the-less.

Maybe he's got religion...

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is the digital equivalent of a hair shirt.

Or maybe he was looking to compile a list of all the lastest euphemisms for gentials, excrement, related fuctions, and common miss- or alternative spellings. In which case, he's brilliant. Mission Accomplished.

trivial...

[advocate_one]

according to the site you reffed for the prolite

However, it is possible to build your own cable for a few dollars. Then making Linux communicate with the light board is trivial.

Once you have it, your can start communicating with the message board from your computer. I've proposed an enhanced protocol that would be backwards compatible. Pro-Lite has not responded much about it. Perhaps they think there is little interest by programmers.

[..]

I've started to collect home-brewed applications , particularly for Linux. For example, you can post a scrolling message to Walt using the web.

Re:trivial...

[ndevice]

trivial perhaps, but a waveform updating at 300 (or even 9600) bps probably won't be too impressive.

Cannon Fodder

[ari_j]

This is just begging for it. It's not even a challenge - at 1:30 AM Pacific time it doesn't even stand a chance. Why not host it on an 8086 running Elks or Minix off of a 360KB floppy while you're at it? And power it by a couple of potatoes, too.

A veritable rainbow of smarts

[corvair2k1]

Sign that displays messages based on web content: Very Cool.

Pointing tens of thousands of nerds to your DSL line: Not cool at all.

But seriously, that's a pretty cool idea. I could imagine one on my desk cycling through Slashdot headlines, weather information, and (of course) my fortune file. :) But it would be even cooler if one could rig up an 802.11 interface!

do you hear that sound?

[circletimessquare]

that's the sound of little innocent leds whimpering under a slashdotting

Re:do you hear that sound?

[irving47]

Hey, that's not bad. I think my message actually got through... "All your LED's are belong to me."

As expected

[Coyote67]

Yeah. Right.

I'm completely sure that not a single person here expected that site to stay up.

Re:Just one thing..

[SynKKnyS]

24.x.x.x = cable

And DSL... but, yes, this is cable.

Re:Freecache

[linhux]

It _would_ have helped him a little, since as far as I understand (although I haven't been able to visit the site), the site was nothing _but_ the index.html (and the CGI). At least it would have taken the major hit from the frontpage, but the CGI script would probably get enough hits to take the server down anyway.

Anyway, it might not even have been himself that submitted the story. It could just as well be an angry friend that wanted it to go down.

story poster will have fun on 56K

[Barbarian]

Cablelynx, his provider, is going to shitcan him:

f. Service Restrictions. You agree to use your Service for legal purposes only. Any illegal use shall be cause for immediate termination of Service. You agree that your use of the Service shall be for personal use within the confines of one household or business. You shall not share Service, or use Service to host a server site for FTP, telnet, e-mail hosting, web hosting; or use Service in conjunction with a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or VPN tunneling protocol; or sublet, resell, assign, or provide access to any third party on any basis under the terms of this Agreement. Violations of any of these terms shall be cause for immediate termination of Service and may be grounds for Company's refusal to provide future Service to you. You agree that you will not web host or utilize continuous streaming video or audio for periods of more than four hours with at least one hour of inactivity between uses. You understand that the Internet is a public place and you are responsible for your actions or the actions of those that access the Internet through your Service. It shall be your responsibility to provide, at your own cost, any necessary firewall, or Internet security software to prevent unauthorized access of your computer via the Internet.

He's probably killed off service for others in his neighborhood too:

(from tcptraceroute>

13 89-228.vbrg-a5.cablelynx.com (24.204.89.228) [closed] 1713.840 ms * 2018.488 ms

Re:story poster will have fun on 56K

[ocelotbob]

You agree that you will not web host or utilize continuous streaming video or audio for periods of more than four hours with at least one hour of inactivity between uses

There's the loophole. All he has to do is shut off the server every four hours and blame it on the /. effect. A downed IIS process and a slashdotted server are indistinguishable by the naked eye.

Re:story poster will have fun on 56K

[__aahlyu4518]

You agree that you will not web host or utilize continuous streaming video or audio for periods of more than four hours with at least one hour of inactivity between uses.

So he hosted a website for 4 seconds... he will be fine... ;-)

The next message will be... ?

[moriya]

How long until we start seeing people plastering "All your base are belong to us!" or variants thereof? Here are a couple of other lines that come to mind...

"Osama Bin-Laden was here"
"She bangs! She bangs!"

I think I might do this myself...

[monkeyman225]

My plan: 1. Make sign connected to interweb 2. ?????????? 3. Profit! yay/wooage to the guy who thought of this and subsiquently got his server killed when it got /.'ed

Working for me

[aussie_a]

Takes a while to work, but it works once every 10mins.

Never seen this??

[Hurricane78]

Never seen this?

Re:Never seen this??

[nikster]

OMG they could play Pong on a building.

for people to lazy to click on the link, the Blinkenlights project wired up light bulbs behind every window of a large office building and allowed them to be remote-controlled by a computer.

They had a building-size dot matrix display at night. For text messages, and Pong over the mobile phone! just call a number, and play.
It looks awesome. Too bad it's not operational anymore.

Slashdotting a LED

[Chran]

I think this is the first time a LED has been slashdotted.

Maybe tomorrow ...

[Rico_za]

we can get Timothy to post this as the daily dupe, and slashdot him again! Betcha his isp sends someone over to his house at 1:30 am to personally pull the plug.

Re:Maybe tomorrow ...

[junklight]

and possibly beat him senseless

All your led...

[Iblis]

are belong to us!

YES!!!

[dallask]

Ive always wanted one of these... as soon as this guy regains consciousness, Im going to get details, build my own, hook it up to my friends OC3 network (@isp), and repost to /.

Should this actually work, it could become the next net phenom.

We should all ban together and donate band-aids by the thousands for this guys server :P

One of the funnier submissions.

[dj245]

I guess the submission widget is closed due to slashdot. With all the cursing and trolling people did with the sign though, the good ones sort of got lost. My favorite:

Trapped in Pro Lite LED Sign factory. Please send help!

classic. I don't really thing it will be very interesting unless the sign is posted in a public place, with a strict swear filter. Maybe some moderation oversight. Put it in a pub; loads of fun. The true entertainment potential of this thing is vastly underestimated.

Then again, when you're drunk, anythings funny. Except those "in Soviet Russia" jokes.

Re:One of the funnier submissions.

[Crayon Kid]

I'd second the idea about putting up a LED sign in a pub, except for two issues: one, you can't really filter profanity. The assholes will use spaces, letters and whatnot to mask it and it will still get through. Second, the LED display humor will be limited to the moderator's sense of humor.

Re:One of the funnier submissions.

[omahajim]

Didn't see This sign for sale - call 555-xxxx. But then again if this sign is (was) just for the private amusement of some guy in his basement I guess the response rate would be kinda poor.

Old old news?

[Large Green Mallard]

He's talking about a 1999 LJ article, and all the pages are last modified 1999 or 2000..

ie, 4 or 5 years ago.

I have to say it...

[Vampyre_Dark]

Litterally...

Somebody set up us the LED.
All your LED are belong to us.

No wait, I'm an idiot..

[Large Green Mallard]

I was only reading the first link, which is the 1999/2000 information this guy used :)

Do it yourself with a handful of parts ...

[unfies]

From Atmel: 8051.

Some drivers/latches from Micrel.

And of course some LED blocks from Sun LED.

The 8051 handles incoming serial data as well as acting as a 'RAM DAC' to load the lines on the Micrels which act as line drivers to the LED displays.

The Micrel's can be bit-banged in a serial-ish protocol which corellates to outputs on the 8-16 pins on each micrel (ie: think of it as programming a multipin output chip via a serialish link).

The 8051 constantly changes which row of LED block its updating and goes about it's business. Ideally, the 8051 should be changing rows 70 times a second for a good clean refresh rate.

These really aren't any different from the LCD modules you can pick up from Jameco, Hosfelt, or MPJA (or perhaps Digikey).

And lets not forget Find Chips for all of your parts searching needs.

Famous last words:

[mrbarkeeper]

"You have no chance to survive make your time!"

Already done

[Snaapy]

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.

Re:Already done

[tokachu(k)]

Yes, and this was done by an electronics geek before, too.

Look in the "Fun" section of Very Low Sodium and you too can mess with someone's LED sign!

Re:Already done

[no longer myself]

Yeah, I remember visiting that site a while back when I was trying to find the origin for the "Fanimutation" SWF of "Yatta". They did a great cover of TMBG's "Destination Moon" too. A nice site to kill a little time.

As for the article post, the link is currently pointing to 24.204.89.28 which belongs to Cablelynx... Live and learn! I guess it's not too bright of an idea to put a cable modem link on the front page of Slashdot... Of course, you could put the link in a sig at the end of a reply and watch it get completely ignored...

Re:Already done

[HaloZero]

Wasn't there anything company with a similar gimmick, where you could play a game like Pong or something from your phone, and have it displayed on the building...

Re:Already done

[aneurysm36]

and the blinkenlights projects
http://www.blinkenlights.de

good stuff

Re:Already done

[Snaapy]

We have had a Tetris bulding. Some students had extra time, 10000 light bulbs, too much network cable and Linux. So the biggest Tetris game of the world was born. They converted the whole building to a Tetris display. here

Haha..

[unixbugs]

I wonder how long it took him to get that sign working again....

Here we go!

[moltar77]

This is just another medium for people to port goatse.cx to.

Re:Freecache

[cybergibbons]

If you'd RTFA, you'd realise that it only works with files that are larger than 5Mb. It's not designed to work with HTML, it's for media files. This problems going to continue until most of slashdot pull their heads out of their arses.

How do I know this works?

[SpaceJunkie]

But there is something a little boring- without a cam feed- how can we actually tell it works? I did actually manage to get to it, and leave a message on the board - but who knows if it displayed - and if my tags did what I expected them to do?

Slashdot overload

[Anonymous Coward]

What about:

PL-M2014R DRIVER FAILURE. Contact vendor.

. :) sure to get any one worried

Re:Just one thing..

[ThePatrioticFuck]

And DSL... but, yes, this is cable

No, that was cable :)

TPF

Re:w0w (if it were still the 80's)

[Crayon Kid]

Back in the day you'd probably get DDoS'ed by your mom picking up the phone downstairs.

Achtung!

[infolib]

Achtung, alle Slassendotters!
Das sign is nicht für goatse und first posten. Ist easy timeouts zu generieren, kracking und Distributed Service denichten! Das anonymen kauards standen from keywerk back, ist to post comments to polls. Die palen geeks going heraus in sunlight and girls meeting. Alle relaxen, while blinkenlights sowjetrussen watschen.

This was cool like 3 years ago...

[krypt0s]

...when VeryLowSodium.com (the source of the famous "Yatta!" flash video) did the same thing. He even has a webcam so you can see your scrolling nugget of wisdom in action.

Re:This was cool like 3 years ago...

[vslashg]

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.

Re:Freecache

[wo1verin3]

>> This problems going to continue until most
>> of slashdot pull their heads out of their arses.

Are heads aren't up our asses, you just seem to think we want the server to be up. I'm more then happy when some n00b (great work on the LED, dumbass posting cable modem website on /.) gets to feel the effect.

Co-incidence?

[MtlDty]

Perhaps its just a coincidence, but the ticker board in Times Square is now scrolling: 'Error 404 Page not found' ?

Ethics of Article Posting (offtopic)

[harikiri]

Slashdot needs to post an article, on above all things - article posting ethics. This current article demonstrates a trend that's happening recently, whereby people are seeing someone's cool homepage (or submitting their own), and forwarding it to hundreds of thousands of internet users via a Slashdot article.

I mean please, linking a CGI page on a windows server hosted on your cable modem connection, with a throughput of 9.6K... that's not gonna hold up 5 seconds after slashdot posts the article.

This is hopelessly offtopic, but it's something that people need to start thinking about before they submit an article.

Re:Ethics of Article Posting (offtopic)

[BalloonMan]

It's not so much about the submitter as it is about the (theoretically more savvy) person who approved the article. I'm sure lots of stupid submissions come in every day, many referring to underpowered web servers. Clearly, most of them don't make the grade, but this one slipped through, and that is sad because the summary set off alarm bells in my head before I got through the first sentence. It also didn't take me very long to consider the possibility that this submission was made with malicious intent.

Somebody in a position of authority at SlashDot must assume the responsibility for saving these hapless twits (or victims) from themselves. The SlashDot authority that approved this submission should be reprimanded.

Re:Ethics of Article Posting (offtopic)

[anshil]

When I'm looking on the discussion on the top I got the feeling this was just the intention the artice poster had in mind. Using /. as weapon for his childisch ambitions to bring down a side. And what did we do? Just followed his request, and he now thinks in his moron wolrd he is THE BOMB. How does it feel being tricked by a child?

Re:Ethics of Article Posting (offtopic)

[afabbro]

Too bad the editors don't read Slashdot.

Filter?

[MBAFK]

I was at a festival this weekend where they had the sms txt screen going on. If they did filter it I didn't notice it - there were some racial ones that raised a few eye brows.

"Mat blows goats Andy/Nuk has proof"

60,000 people laugh.

One guy... one computer... one led sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotted, who didn't see that coming?

Any gadget

[WillRobinson]

Most Pc's - $399
Any Gadget you can build and put on a pc - $9.95

Any pc with a Gadget that can take a /. ing
Priceless

Yes, I have a mirror of this

[monkey_jam]

Yes i have

Re:Freecache

[BReflection]

If you would JFTIY you would realize that it works for pretty much any page. And I know it's been discussed here that it wouldn't take a genius to simply add http://freecache.org before all links on their site.

Re:".. An LED Sign"?? WTF?

[MURL]

Most people I know pronounce the letters in the acronym LED. It is proper to say "an L E D" in the same way it is proper to ask Pat Sajak: "may I have an L, please?"

Yes..

[monkey_jam]

here is a mirror version

Dueling LED signs

[PurplePhase]

I loved the pair they had at the Blue Man Group show (played after the openers and before BMG started their show when I saw them 1 year ago). After a minute of them scrolling related signs, they started quipping and soon it was an open revolt - the left sign was the upstart, the right was the 'tool of the man' (according to the left). They each also asked the crowd to shout about the other sign (and had the obligitory "I can't hear you!" comments :), but it got going too fast to read everything - what with the short-ish signs, fast text, and simultaneous "talking".

Fun stuff :)

Hmm, it might sound like a tame version of a 2-person chat room, but it was much funnier!

YMMV,

8-PP

I think I know what happened.

[yet another coward]

Somebody set him up the bomb. He get signal. Main LED turn on. All his base are belong to us. He is on the way to destruction. He have no chance to survive make his time.

For great justice.

Dude!

[cardshark2001]

Just because you have fun with your python doesn't mean you have to tell us all about it. Did you also have a minor kernal release?

Netscape Engineering Sign

[bjb]

Reminds me of a story I posted to slashdot probably back in 1997 or 1998 about an old bus sign (as in public transportation, not computer you dingbat) that that you could send messages to the engineering team with. Got slashdotted as well.

But hey, this one is in color!

(I would have made a link to the old story, but slashcode's search capability is a tad weak)

Re:Netscape Engineering Sign

[michael path]

I was actually looking for that article! I remember that sign. :)

Re:Netscape Engineering Sign

[tqft]

Try the waybackmachine.

Alternatively use google advanced search. As granparent said - /. search isn't real good.

He did not submit it!

[Anonymous Coward]

The page currently reads at the top:

Good morning Slashdot users. Someone thought it'd be cute to link to me, which isn't a good idea with the 10 user version of IIS. Sorry for the 403.9's. For more information about my setup, go to ArsTechnica or SomethingAwful.

MOD PARENT UP!

[ArmpitMan]

From the webpage itself, now that it's back up: "Someone thought it'd be cute to link to me, which isn't a good idea with the 10 user version of IIS. Sorry for the 403.9's." Want to DDOS someone? Just pretend to be them and submit their webpage to Slashdot!

No such thing...

[ghereheade]

Besides the fact that there is no such critter as a DB-9 connector.

Back in the day when the "D" shell connectors were created (at ITT-Cannon?) there were four sizes all with 20 guage contacts. The 15 contact connector was in an "A" size shell, 25 contacts in a "B", 37 contacts in a "C", and 50 contacts in a "D" size. Later, a 9 contact connector was developed in a smaller shell. Guess what, the next letter available was "E". So it's correct to have:
DE-9x
DA-15x
DB-25x
DC-37x
DD-50x
wher e x is either P or S depending on whether the contacts are pins or sockets. As an aside, there are now connectors with fifteen 22guage contacts in an "E" size shell, 26 in an "A" etc. These "high density" connectors are HDE-15x, HDA-26x, etc. The VGA connector is a variant of the HDE-15.

When RS-232 was standardized as an interface, they chose two connectors - the DB-25 and a 26 contact Centronics. The DB-25 became the ubiquitous connector in the PC industry. But almost no one was the full RS-232 standard. At best they might use the CTS and RTS lines in addition to the transmit and recieve. So, to save money, the PC industry went to the DE-9 to eliminate the extraneous hardware costs. But guess what, a lot of inDUHviduals couldnt' get their minds around the fact that the connector is smaller so they couldn't change what they call the connector. Thus the incorrect nomenclature "DB-9". Get it right, it is a DE-9.

Also note, since the PC makers have eliminated all the hand shaking, most of the flow control, and used a different connector than what's in the specification, the serial port on your PC is not strictly RS-232.

Re:No such thing...

[plover]

Thanks, Cliff!

I can just hear him now: "Uhh, the ancient Sumerians used to connect their teletypes together with DB-25P terminated cables wired in a null modem fashion. They found that if they crossed DTR to DCD and RTS to CTS that they could emulate the behavior of DCE modem equipment without actually having a modem present. Can I get another beer here?"

Re:No such thing...

[binaryspiral]

An instructor of mine pointed out that NIC Card is actually not redundant if used to describe the chip and the card it's located on. Network Interface Controller Card It still doesn't make hearing Nic Card any better... :(

Re:No such thing...

[p_tweak]

And yet, he still got it to work... without knowing the entire useless history of the DB-FU connector. Looks like you have a bunch of useless knowledge there, bucko!

Why approve this submission? Idiot editors!

[Monoman]

This was an AC post calling for control of a piece of hardware. How do we know the AC is even the real owner of the sign? Even if it is real, the sign probably crashed under the load just from /. subscribers (all 3 of them :-) ) before it was posted for the public.

Over the years I have had quite a few submissions rejected and then the editors publish something like this. eeedeeeeots!

Re:Why approve this submission? Idiot editors!

[marklyon]

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.

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 /. Why did they accept this submission? What does this say about the quality of the editors?

Re:Why approve this submission? Idiot editors!

[Siva]

yeah, my thoughts exactly. if it were me reviewing the submission, the fact that it was anonymous, coupled with the links pointing to an IP address instead of a hostname, would have made me suspicous. hope you don't get a call from your ISP.

Re:Why approve this submission? Idiot editors!

[grazzy]

Considering you DID post it to both ars and sa i'd say you're not that innocent.

Where to get a LED sign?

[scorp1us]

Sams club[.com] has the Beta Bright (24L x 2.1H) for $158 Item# 078029

Or the big one for $528... anyone else have prices?

I've been looking to mount one in my car so I can berate the dumb ass drivers behind me.

Re:Where to get a LED sign?

[marklyon]

I bought the one that's being pounded on through Ebay. I'd recommend NOT buying the Beta Brite. Get the Pro Lite instead.

The Pro Lite has many advanced features and an open protocol that you won't get if use buy a Beta Brite.

The sign runs off of 9v, so it could easily be wired to work in your car. A little bit of work on a controller and you could probably create a simple pre-programmed series of messages accessible by button press in the front.

Re:Where to get a LED sign?

[scorp1us]

That's exactly my point.
I want only a few phrases, I think a BASIC stamp will work:

"You seem to like my rear end. Want a piece of it?"
"Your turn signal is STILL on"
"You are being recorded"
"Left lane for passing"
"Speed limit is 55"
"Speed limit is 65"
"Get off the phone and pay attention"
"You're cute, what's your #? :)"

Re:Where to get a LED sign?

[Nynaeve]

That last one somewhat conflicts with your sig. :)

Re:Where to get a LED sign?

[scorp1us]

Hehe yeah. Shhhhhhhh.

Well she could be following me... But what girls wouldn't want to be asked for their #? And the other issue is how do I get it? Have her tap it out in morse code on ther headlights? lol. No, that last one is just for fucking with their heads. Hey, it never hurts to make someone feel good about themselves, to feel desired. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that.

Re:Where to get a LED sign?

[brownj_685]

I found the Beta Bright protocol manual on line in about 2 minutes just from the links in the article. It is apparently free to download now. As for the Pro Lite, I have not found any info about it, but I will take your word that the protocol is available.

You're a friggin idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass. "LDS" was a nod to Star Trek: The voyage home. "2600" is the name of a magazine, or the frequency of the Captain Crunch whistle. "2800" is the actual baud rate the great-grandparent was failing to remember.

Re:You're a friggin idiot.

[jwinter1]

I think it was actually 2400.

Is it just me or...

[malakai]

... does this story feel very 1999.

Remember back when everyone was interfacing stupid things to the internet. Coffemakers with IPs, soda machines with IPs, remote control vehicles, model trains, blah... blah.. blah.

It's old, it's done. I don't know what the next leap would be. Maybe interface some sort of semi-autonmous robot and let people control it for 5mins. But even that sounds familar. Maybe do that and deploy it in Iraq. That would be different.

Re:Is it just me or...

[cr0sh]

Even the robot has been done - used to be an ASEA or some kind of industrial arm in AU you could control via a Java interface from a web page...

Another sign to play with

[kent_eh]

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.

Re:Another sign to play with

[kent_eh]

And before someone asks, no, it's not mine.
But I do have Ian's permission to attempt to slashdot his sign.

Re:Another sign to play with

[nuclearpenguin]

we uhhhh, we slashdotted it.

Re:Another sign to play with

[kayser_soze]

Yeah, we completely pwned that. :-/

[C]

Close...

[emtboy9]

It should be:

What happen?
Someone set up us the Slashdot Story!
We get packets!
Main LED turn on!
How are you gentlement? All your bandwidth are belong to us. Your server is on the way to destruction!
What you say?
You have no chance to throttle bandwidth, make your time! HAHAHAHAHAHAAH

Launch all 403.9 for great justice!

LCD IRC

[marsjays]

I actually hooked up an LCD display to one of my computers and created a small script/plugin for irssi, so when someone said anything it showed up on the display.

It was pretty useless though, since the display was to small to be read from anywhere but the chair by my computer.

BT for web

[Gorgeous Si]

In order for bittorrent to be effective you need to have enough people with active connections to download from. When downloading a web page you would have many smaller connections that would not be active for very long.

As long as the page is in the users cache, it could still be served. Tracking all the connections may be an issue ... but tracking 1000 connections would probably be easier than serving a webpage - this comment form I'm looking at is ~18k, 1000 downloads = 18Mb doesn't it? Surely under high contention, a system like this would be more efficient?

A modification of BitTorrent would be an extreme way to acheive it, but it was just an archtectural basis for my idea.

Feh, it'll never catch on!

Nice catch blanko ninyo...

[neon777]

but too bad your ass got slashdotted!

here's a working web based LED thingy

[complete loony]

Send a message to walt.

Want to see it in action? Pics!

[marklyon]

You can go here to see some shots of the sign in action.

I built an LED sign and did this!

[enosys]

I built an 72x7 LED sign and did this. It uses a Motorola MC68705P3S microcontroller (now discontinued) driving a chain of 74HC374 octal D flip-flops. The columns are driven by 7407 open collector buffers, through current limiting resistors, and the rows are driven by transistors. The microcontroller multiplexes the display, does serial communication in software and has a character generator. You can see a block diagram and the firmware

It was fun to build though LED signs aren't very useful. Posting a link to a newsgroup was the best thing I did with it. My webcam was pointed at it so anyone could see what it was displaying, there was a log of messages, and you could even draw on it.

Oh, great!

[piecewise]

Now we're even slashdotting LED signs! Outrageous!

I've got a ProLite sign too

[joebok]

and it's great! I use it to post my meeting schedule, if I'm in or out, and any messages I feel would enlighten the coworkers. Getting it hooked up to the internet so I could update it from home made me the King of the Gadgets at work. It's also great to put a personalized "welcome" message to clients when they stop by the office. People are suckers to see their name in lights! (And I include myself - that is, after all, why I bought the thing...)

from the mid 90s

[chillywillycd]

I recall submitting messages to an LED sign in someone's development office. I think it was netscape's... anyone else recall this?
it had a webcam pointed at it, so once it was submitted and scrolling you got to see what it looked like to them...

i'll have to check my old harddrives, and archives to see if i still have the capture of my "i am a pineapple" message...

Here's another

[RJack-45]

Here's another LED Sign. It's by the owner of a computer store in my town, and I use it to ask him what kinds of used junk he has in. And for ASCII art :)

RJack-45

This has been done before...

[dougTheRug]

This was done long ago on http://www.verylowsodium.com

a link

[dougTheRug]

http://www.verylowsodium.com/fun.php#sign

RSS Feeds on your sign

[Decius6i5]

Here is a very simple program I wrote that pulls down a number of RSS news feeds, including Slashdot, and scrolls them on an Pro Lite LED display. This one is written in perl.

lednews.pl

(The Scientific American feed is commented out because newsisfree changed their syndication urls. I don't have the new url handy...)

Re:RSS Feeds on your sign

[Pieroxy]

Is it legal? AFAIK, all the stories published are "Copyright 1997-2004, OSDN - Open Source Development Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved."

Oh well....

Re:RSS Feeds on your sign

[Decius6i5]

Is it legal?

Well, they ARE publishing the RSS feed. It probably depends on whether your LED sign is for "home use" or it if is "publically displayed."

I think that if Slashdot wishes to prevent the republication of their RSS feed on LED signs they ought to push for a new field to be added to the RSS file format that prohibits the copying or rebroadcast of the contents, along with new federal legislation prohibiting technology that parses RSS but ignores this field. They could call it the "broadcast flag." Oh, thats right, someone is already doing this...

best used in my car

[amnesiaWind]

i've always wanted to mount one of these things in my rear window and hookup to a little keypad in front so i can send nasty messages to other drivers... a nice touch would be to have the ability to store a few presets for quick responses... imagine how great it would be to whip around someone and flash "get off your @#$! phone!" or "that pedal to the right is the gas"... or simply "you're a moron!"... the possibilities for offense are limitless...

Re:Oh, great! (slashdotted LED sign)

[antispam_ben]

This is funny? It's dissapointing! I was wanting to play, or at least see the log. Did anyone save the log and can put a mirror up? Puh-lease?

Why are we so fascinated at such obviously crude technologies (LED's and CAPS-LOCK keys)?

THAT BASTARD

[ivan1011001]

He redirected to goat.cx

BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!!


Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling.

That's because I am yelling.

Wow...goat.cx as a front page article

[jonfelder]

It must be a troll's dream.

Warning - no longer work safe

[gpuk]

It seems the owner of the site has changed it so that it now redirects to goat.cx (apparently after a recommendation to do so in the ars technica forum). He asked the slashdot editors to take down the story (as he didn't post it for submission), they refused and he has altered it to point to goatse.

Re:Warning - no longer work safe

[marklyon]

Yeah, but I decided to be nice to the folks at work, since I know I'd hate having that pop up on my monitor at work. Now, it points to a log of messages.

Re:Warning - no longer work safe

[gpuk]

heheh probably a better idea :o)

Re:Yeah...

[symbolic]

The fifth-grade mentality behind most of the messages will be right there, center stage, for everyone to marvel at. A real treasure.

A similar CGI interface to a scrolling LED sign

[BovineOne]

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.)

Reaction

[dfj225]

Owner of LED Display: I never knew LEDs could burst into flames like that. Curse you /. and your endless masses!

I'm thinking

[tekiegreg]

I'll hook up my TV to the Internet, everybody decide what channels I'm watching please.

Somehow I think I'm getting a Cable bill for thousands of dollars in pay per view Porno channels.

Nice anti-Kerry add - jackass...

[bergeron76]

It's funny how when this was originally posted on slashdot, he didn't have an anti-Kerry animation running on the site.

Now he does. Enjoy the Patriot Act and John Ashcroft if "your GW boy" gets elected.

Sounds like this little LED project is being used as election year propaganda.

lcd display

[heri0n]

heres a site to make a lcd display show your cpu stats. http://www.linuxgazette.com/book/view/1648 you can get creative... ;)

Re:Freecache

[cybergibbons]

It simply forwards the requests on to the original site, so no problems are solved.

Already done years ago

[courtarro]

Many people have probably visited Walt's Pro-Lite info site by now, but the owner of that site currently has a page up that does exactly what the OP mentions. All that, and his script was last updated in 1999 ...