There's certainly plenty of readymade devices out there that'll give you
information at a
glance, but if you're more the DIY-type you may want to follow the lead of David Bue Pedersen from Volunteer Lab Rat, who put together this spiffy little picture frame that notifies him when his friends are online. There's no fancy LCDs here, however, just some plain old pictures housed in clear frames with an LED placed on top of each, which light up whenever the person is on IM or Skype. Needless to say, there's quite a bit of coding and some slightly daunting hardware hackery involved to get all that to work, but Pedersen has at least provided the necessary schematics and board layout if you want to give it a go -- you can even push things all the way up to 22 LEDs if five isn't enough for you.
[Via
Hacked Gadgets]
posted Apr 8th 2008 1:45PM
Look, I'm not saying that David Bue Pedersen is gay, but if you're going to build a notifier system such as this, and you only have 4-5 spaces to use, why would you fill it with a bunch of dudes?
Is it really THAT important to know when your buddy comes online as opposed to your new Ashley Madison contacts?
Ashley Madison... does she cater real estate as well as affairs?
I want to know why they chose to decorate the place in modern "garage metal cabinets"
So simple that you'll kick yourself
Now all I have do is develop a Wack-A-Mole version of this when my ex's sign online.
http://www.miscgarbage.com
I'd pay a ton if you could come up with a voodoo doll version of that.
and what's with all this friends with exes nonsense out there? i call bullshit!
Any one else see the irony in a DYI article were the person has created some hardware hackery, yet is using an off the shelf Dell PC?
I see more irony in the fact that you recognize a Dell computer that doesn't say Dell anywhere on it.
@Lowest Ranked
The last company I worked for had plenty of machines built off that chassis, I could recognize that POS from any angle.
Whose to say he didn't gut the Wii and his computer and magically frankenstein them into eachother's chassis(es?, ies? chasii?).
Now thats what a real modder would do.
@ lowest ranked
I knew it was a Dell too, because I have the same one to my right...
Me too, a very souped up dimension 9100. Sadly.
But anyway, the idea is great. I'd love for this to hit mainstream.
Simple yet effective.
Hopefully like this comment.
:)
More like your mom.
wallace and gromit did it better
*excitedly and hurriedly builds this*
hmm, i must not have done this right, i'm not getting any notifications that my friends are online.
*checks friend list of 0 - hugs self*
I think you'll find the LEDs are under the pictures.
Anyway, I would build one myself but with a contact list of over 100 people, I doubt it would be all that practical lol
dude, you have a lot of relatives
dude, you have a lot of hair!
Im going to change that bloody pic soon -_- more trouble than its worth lol
uhh...i don't think the picture is the problem there, buddy
Is your name really Simon Richards or are you just playing off of Richard Simmons?
Sorry, I just haven't seen you here before.
Also, judging by your use of the word 'bloody' and your picture, I'm insisting you must be Harry Potter's crackhead evil twin.
My name really is Simon Richards, and i'm a Londoner. lol.
Londonian?
Londinite?
Londonioians.
San Diegoians.
i believe the proper word is San Diago
any coincidence that a guy that spent all this time making this only has pictures of dudes?
Any coincidence that you missed the first comment, dove straight to the bottom of the page and said the exact same thing?
I surely hope so.
In david's defense, 1st post is about being gay, david's is about him not knowing any girls. Big difference.
Sorry, didn't realize David's boyfriend was on patrol.
I'll watch what I say next time.
Thunderbirds are go!
The system is already in place so improving the display, such as using an LCD instead of photos and diodes would be the easy part. I feel a venture capital coming on ;)
Otto
http://www.dragonlasers.com
Hi everybody. I'm David, the creator of the picture frame thingy.
I feel insulted that two comments suggest I'm gay. Well... I'm NOT okay!
As a resonse to these posts, I've decided never to publish the missing firmware for the microcontroller nor the Win32 application that drives the display.
It's sad that you guys should ruin it for everybody else that would be interrested in this.
To the rest of you: Thank you for your interrest in my project.
Regards
David
I didn't think you were gay for building this, it's quite cool actually.
However, since you don't want to share your the firmware nor the Win32 application, your stock in the gay department has drastically increased.
Nah, you're just in denial.