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Another Internet Griswold's Controllable Christmas Lights

Posted by timothy on from the moving-toward-the-source dept.

An anonymous reader writes: For over a decade, Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights have been a festive online holiday tradition for millions of Internet users world-wide, so it was sadly the end of an era last year, when the Griswold wanna-be hung up his Santa Hat in 2014. But with the "Internet of Things" being the rage these days, it didn't take long for another Griswold to emerge from the North Pole, or at least pretty darn close to it. Ken Woods from Fairbanks, Alaska has his house online 24 hours a day with a dozen ON/OFF buttons that Internet users can use to toggle his lights with a click of a mouse. Here's a video of it in action and he uses Amazon EC2 to power it online. (While that all looks real, low-UID /.'ers will remember that Alek did a simulation from 2002-2004 using Perl code to switch between a series of images. Looks like the prankster dusted off that code for the Control Christmas Lights.com website.) I, for one, welcome our new Griswold Overlords with a big HO-HO-HO.

24 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Time to DOS by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

    What's better than putting a bunch of GET-based URLs that control lights on the Internet? Putting them on SlashDot.

  2. Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Given that you can buy several brands of light switches off of the shelf in home depot now that are internet controllable, how is this even fascinating anymore? I went to the page and it looks like something from the early 90's, and basically the queue is so backed up the lights are just constantly turning on and off. I mean in my own house I can turn the lights on and off through voice, and even that I don't really consider impressive anymore. Seems like time to come up with something new, or a new take on it.

    Maybe I am just being grinchy, but I was doing stuff like this back in the 90's and now it just seems a bit lame. Kudo's for them having fun with it, but I so desperately want to re-write that web page for them in angular or something so it doesn't make my head hurt....

    So slashdotters, what would be 'the next thing' that would be far more interesting with the capabilities we have today? We should be able to come up with something pretty neat given the tools at our disposal.

    1. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by fropenn · · Score: 1

      Post a sign on your house that can be viewed through the webcam that would only be understandable by regular /. users. That would be proof enough :)

    2. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      A sign with the AC's post number (#51165329) would work.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    3. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by kenwoods · · Score: 1

      https://www.dropbox.com/s/w4lq...

    4. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by kenwoods · · Score: 3, Informative

      Proof: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w4lq...

    5. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 2

      Now that would be cool.... Choose your object, donate to charity, and watch it print then delivered. Would have to make the donation large enough to cover the costs of printing/shipping, but that would be very different and VERY cool.

    6. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by rockout · · Score: 1

      Maybe I am just being grinchy,

      "maybe"?

      --
      I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
    7. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by rockout · · Score: 1

      Nice work!

      --
      I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
    8. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 1

      Nope, not impressed, and why is this newsworthy???? AC, it simply is not don't do it, but why is this gracing the pages of 'News for Nerds' who have been doing this for a very long time. Besides that, I really wanted to see what slashdotters could come up with that WOULD be news for nerds (See the 3d printing idea above). I am betting a number of people on here could come up with the next internet sensation that was very original and clever.

      Again, do what you want, don't care. Likewise, I think it is OK to question why it is news for nerds....

    9. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 1

      Didn't need proof, figured you did it. Mine are controllable from my phone as well, just not publishing the urls :-). I see you posted the proof below already. I would just suggest doing a quick angular/bootstrap front end to it that was mobile friendly. Heck, if you aren't sure how to do it I could probably help you out real quick. Would have more of a twitter like feel to it then. Of course not sure how that would affect bandwidth but with compressed js can't imagine it would do it much as people would not have to refresh the rest of the page.

    10. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by kenwoods · · Score: 1

      Sweet! I'm glad you have ideas on how to improve the site. As it's in heavy production right now, I'm not going to massively incorporate changes. I don't have a dev version of the site, as it was never intended to get any bigger than "friends and family" Friend of a friend of a friend picked it up at ABC, and then it exploded in popularity from there. Thanks for your thoughts, regardless. We'll look into changes for next year. I'm currently limited by the 320K outbound channel we have locally, so it's hard to do much. Nice to see that the slashdot effect is still valid, though. https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fqn...

    11. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 1

      I'm serious on helping you out, BTW. Always willing to do that. It would actually likely reduce your overall bandwidth as you can grab the bootstrap and angualar js codes from their source site, rather than yours. Also will reduce button pushes to a single JS based query push to your server. The whole page would not refresh (although now it probably is hitting their browser cache mostly anyways). So basically the only thing you would push down to their site from yours is a compressed controller script, and a simple angular page. You still eat the video, however, which I am sure is most of your bandwidth. It would also allow you to 'grey out' the buttons once pushed until the request was received so people would know when their action was received. Might reduce multi presses. Just thoughts having developed some very high volume web based stuff in the past. Again, wasn't trying to poo-poo the idea so much but wanted to stir the pot and see what 'the next cool idea' could be.

      Merry Christmas!

    12. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 1

      Again, it would probably be like thirty lines of js download from HIS site.... I wouldn't source all the other stuff. UI bootstrap comes from THEIR site again as well. I don't know that it would be much larger or smaller, but I think you would get less 'button pounding' on the CGI if you greyed out the button each time they push it until the request comes back. Also, would look great, work on phones. But heck, you are entitled to your opinion. I don't think the controller for activating those cgi's would be over 30 lines of js code either, if you do it correctly. Let's see:

      function LightController($scope, $http) {
      $scope.requestInProgress=false;
      function controlLight(lightnum, turnOn) { var postData = {}; postData.lightNum=lightnum; postData.turnOn=turnOn; $scope.requestInProgress=true;
      $http.post("http://wherever.com", postData).success(function() {$scope.requestInProgress=false;}); }

      There is a whole angular controller that would do the work using post (could change to a get instead), and also give you the ability to grey out the button. I even added some line breaks. If you do angular right, it is not that many lines from YOUR site.

    13. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by kenwoods · · Score: 1

      Congratulations on finding (and using) www.google.com

    14. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1

      It's better than yet another livejournal post from Bennet Haselton.

    15. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I was surprised that the post compared your setup to the Griswolds, yours at least is tasteful.

      Good work, and thank you for sharing your geekiness.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    16. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      If the frameworks a page is written in are making your head hurt and you aren't actively maintaining/developing for the page I'd say you might want to consider the problem to be a personal one since you seem to be focused on something that shouldn't matter to you since its not your problem.

      And for the record ... you do know the original guy was a HOAX right? There were no lights or webcam just static pictures that were swapped in as needed and in the summary ... it points out ... its using the same old code ... so probably no ACTUAL lights here either.

      Congratulations, you've been trolled by a second hand troll from 13 years ago.

      Turn in your UID.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    17. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by clifwlkr · · Score: 1

      Congrats, you didn't actually read the thread. See the picture of him in front of it moments later with a Slashdot post number... Also, you know the original WAS a hoax, then he went and did it for real, right?

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

      So who is trolled now?

    18. Re:Is this interesting anymore? by bfpierce · · Score: 2

      "Maybe I am just being grinchy" I think the proper term would be hipster-grinchy?

  3. "911, what's your emergency?" by Boss,+Pointy+Haired · · Score: 1

    Fire!

    "What's happened?"

    Well...

  4. GCI data caps will kill them by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    $1.00 a GB.

  5. Re:QW Home Automation by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    >> Following Ocam's razor approach

    Who? :)

    >> Visual Lambda

    Your scripting language supports Lambda expressions, then, I assume.

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