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Networked Christmas Tree Controlled By Twitter

An anonymous reader writes "What's Twitter good for? How about crowd sourcing control of your Christmas tree. Dangerous Prototypes built an open source, networked Christmas tree that you can control from Twitter. Send a color or hexadecimal color code to @tweet_tree, then watch the color change on the live video stream. This project is based on an updated version of the open source business card size web server covered previously."

38 comments

  1. xmas by sopssa · · Score: 1

    Why do I feel a little bit of evilness in CmdrTaco's 'ho-ho-ho'...

    1. Re:xmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do I feel a little bit of evilness in CmdrTaco's 'ho-ho-ho'...

      Leave Tiger Woods out of this!

  2. I was impressed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the first 50 times.

  3. pinging christmas tree by sopssa · · Score: 4, Funny

    Judging from the comments, it seems his christmas tree replies to pings quite fast too

    Pinging 192.168.1.126 with 32 bytes of data:
    Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=100
    Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=100
    Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=100
    Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=100

    1. Re:pinging christmas tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should be fast when you are on the same network as the device

    2. Re:pinging christmas tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      192.168.x.x is your own subnet.

    3. Re:pinging christmas tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Talk about completely missing the joke.

    4. Re:pinging christmas tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's the joke?

  4. Down with Twitter by gardel999 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it just me or is Twitter the most annoying thing to take off in years?

    1. Re:Down with Twitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just you. Don't like it? Then don't use it.

    2. Re:Down with Twitter by east+coast · · Score: 1

      No one said you had to use it. For my part? I think Twitter has a ton of possibilities.

      --
      Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
    3. Re:Down with Twitter by dumuzi · · Score: 3, Funny

      So just to clarify, the number of possibilities that Twitter has is approximately 1.0160469088 tonne, or 35.71 bushels (corn), or equivalent to the weight of 5555.5 wamprats, like a small car.

    4. Re:Down with Twitter by eln · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Why does it have to be either/or? Both you AND twitter are the most annoying things to take off in years.

    5. Re:Down with Twitter by peragrin · · Score: 1

      twitter has 140^68 possibilities. 140 characters to the power of every possible character on a keyboard. and just like twitter 99% of those possibilities make no sense to sane intelligent people.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    6. Re:Down with Twitter by xmundt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      greetings and salutations...
      My only real problems with twitter are these:
      a) I am not sure I can say anything of substance in 140 characters...
      b) Twitter promotes the idea that anyone else cares about what you are doing every 30 seconds of the day....Trust me...WE DO NOT CARE.
                  Merry Christmas
                  Dave Mundt

      --
      YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
    7. Re:Down with Twitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I CARE!

      So... what're YOU doin'?

    8. Re:Down with Twitter by OutputLogic · · Score: 1

      Isn't it 68^140 possibilities?

  5. oh, you are so gonna get slashdotted... by xirusmom · · Score: 2, Funny

    How long until his server crashes? Place your bets here.

    1. Re:oh, you are so gonna get slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sorry honey, no Christmas this year. The tree was slashdotted.

    2. Re:oh, you are so gonna get slashdotted... by Megaweapon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well it is only running MINIX. Oh Tanenbaum, Oh Tanenbaum...

      --
      I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
    3. Re:oh, you are so gonna get slashdotted... by supernova_hq · · Score: 1

      I've heard of servers going up in flames from being slashdotted, but this may be the first time in history that slashdot has destroyed something made of WOOD!

  6. All this investment by hwyhobo · · Score: 4, Funny

    All this investment just to replace "finger".

    --
    End anonymous moderation and posting on /.
    1. Re:All this investment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Finger at a distance...

    2. Re:All this investment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not that finger, you idiot.

    3. Re:All this investment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what my girlfriend said about me...

    4. Re:All this investment by ickleberry · · Score: 1

      why couldn't he just use some UDP based server thing rather than this stupid HTTP-based commercial service that nobody wants to invest in?

  7. You bastards, you slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...my Christmas tree!

  8. Wave to the cats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Reminds me of the old "wave to the cats" webpage that was immortalized in the book Dave Barry in Cyberspace. Apparently you could click a button that would cause a robotic hand to wave to a roomful of some woman's pet cats. You may also have been able to watch it on streaming video—I don't really remember—but it would have been crappy, '90s-style streaming video in any case. There was also a section describing the cats' typical reaction to the Internet greetings, which was along the lines of, "Most of them ignore it, but one of them sort of stares at it sometimes."

  9. Check out MY networked RGB tree! by Miamicanes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My tree isn't publicly-networked, but I'm pretty proud of it and love to show it off :-)

    Each light has its own microcontroller & RGB led. The lights are autonomous, but can be orchestrated by the controller.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qR9_8KGPU

    1. Re:Check out MY networked RGB tree! by lwsimon · · Score: 1

      See, now this is cool. Props, man.

      --
      Learn about Photography Basics.
    2. Re:Check out MY networked RGB tree! by speedbiker · · Score: 1

      Very Cool. Should give you some bonus points on your geek card :-)

      sd

  10. In other news... by gwdoiron · · Score: 1

    a Symantec spokesman announced today that they had found vulnerabilities in the Christmas Tree Webserver. "It's terribly easy to DDOS the tree. I mean, it's using an 8-bit PIC MCU that can only service a dozen or so requests a second. We recommend protecting the Christmas Tree with NAV-XMAS version, or at the very least, putting the tree behind a firewall, as we can't guarantee that the tree won't go up in flames when the next malicious attacker strikes."

  11. Alternately by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

    Oh, say, maybe spend some time with the family in front of your own tree? C'mon now, you can still sing Klingon Christmas carols!

    --
    Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
  12. Homeland Security Alert: Fill-In-The-Blank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    control by Twitter !!

    This is only the beginning. Hackers will use this as a template to hack U.S.A. health care benefits to ZERO,
    which is more or less the current U.S.A. health care situation. Your premiums will rise 40% to 50% within 2 years.

    Yours In Novy Urengoy,
    Kilgore T.

    P.S.: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and so on and so forth.

  13. Mbed is much easier. by LoRdTAW · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can do this with an mbed and not need to etch your own PCB or solder SMT components. I got one when they first shipped and let me say they are a pleasure to work with. Ethernet, USB, serial (rs232, SPI, i2c), PWM, Analog in and out as well as digital in and out. Small compact foot print that is DIP compatible. The best pat is it is programed with c++ instead of assembly. You don't need a programmer either as you plug it into any PC (Works with Linux, OSX and Win) via usb and shows up as a 2mb flash disk and you drag and drop the binary to the disk and hit the reset button. The only down side is the compiler is online so its sorta cloud based but there are third party compilers for the ARM Cortex that will work with the mbed.

    No I am not paid to plug this device, its just been a while since I had this much fun playing with embedded hardware. http://www.mbed.org/

    1. Re:Mbed is much easier. by Yetihehe · · Score: 1

      You can do this with an mbed and not need to etch your own PCB or solder SMT components.

      Mbed - $66
      attiny - $1
      Sometimes you just need to control some lights. Yes, it is good for prototyping one light, but when you need 100 lights each with its own controller, simple parts are best.

      --
      Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
  14. ugh by rantingkitten · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's Twitter good for? How about crowd sourcing control of your Christmas tree.

    No, that still doesn't make Twitter good for anything.

    --
    mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
  15. The real headline should be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real headline should be "Excuse to use Christmas Tree icon found just in time by Slashdot editors".

    Merry Christmas to all!