Interesting Uses For a USB LED Screen? 403
Hogwash McFly writes "My boss gave me one of those USB-powered red LED scrolling displays as a Christmas gift, and while cycling the usual 'I read your emails' and 'ID10T Error' messages will be entertaining for a day or two, I was wondering if it could be put to more constructive uses. The configuration file is plaintext and supports different scroll speeds, flashing, bitmaps, and WAV sounds. The font is defined as 5x5 pixels per character, also stored in plaintext as 5 hex values, one for each vertical line of pixels. A dynamically generated message could prove useful in my day-to-day work on the helpdesk, but are there any interesting uses beyond network notifications and news feeds?"
ping times to websites where uptimes matter (Score:5, Interesting)
or look at anything done with the pertelian
http://www.pertelian.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=48 [pertelian.com]
Notification for everything (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:pong or tetris (Score:3, Interesting)
Tetris has been played on just about everything [geekologie.com], I don't see why you can't port a crappy version to this screen.
Music (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting it to display audio level meters for your music would be kinda fun.
For maximum freakout potential (Score:5, Interesting)
For maximum freakout potential you'll need two things:
1) A microphone
2) Speech recognition software
Set the microphone up in a hidden place where it will pick up speech from folks hanging around your desk, and connect it to your computer. Set up the speech recognition software so it will spit out text to the LED display's interface.
Viola! Instant "Have we entered the twilight zone?" machine!
Five Hours? (Score:0, Interesting)
It's almost 5 hours since the last story and this is the best /. could come up with?
Oh well, it is x-mas eve I guess.
Happy hollandaise everyone!
For kids (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been thinking it would be cool to get a sign like that and post it in a visible place at home, then use it to post announcements about my kids' accomplishments. I'd set it up so my wife could change it as well. We'd post things like "John did the dishes every day this week", "Mary aced her math test", etc.
The intent would be to show them we care and to give them positive reinforcement.
Re:Notification for everything (Score:5, Interesting)
"If I passed you on the right you are in the wrong fucking lane"
This is the one I would use the most. Apparently Ohioans don't understand the term "passing lane".
Re:For maximum freakout potential (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:For maximum freakout potential (Score:5, Interesting)
Ding ding. I think we have a winner! There's a Chatbot::Eliza perl module so this could be do-able. Now I want to get me one of those LED screens, so I can try this!
Don't just say it, do it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't just say you read his emails. Actually put them up there! Continuous scroll of everything in your boss's inbox.
If you're slightly less daring, feed your log of all URLs (site name only, perhaps) as they're being viewed by anyone in the office. Your boss did make you keep a log, didn't he?
Caller ID (Score:4, Interesting)
Use it to display caller ID for incoming phone calls.
Statitical Reporting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Say create a program that manages your logs and you get a statistically significant increase of errors report the server giving the errors. You may want to fudge the statistics a bit to give more priority to Errors and less for warnings.
Or warn when you servers drive is near filled or something that would require manual action is near.
Car notifications (Score:5, Interesting)
A message board in your car wouldn't necessarily have to give the finger or otherwise be witty/rude.
There are times when a rear-pointing message board could be extremely useful. Such as:
Your high-beams are on.
Your headlights are off.
Careful, the driver next to me is drunk.
And so on.
However, such signs very well may be illegal in some jurisdictions.
Display Tweets (Score:3, Interesting)
Display tweets from twitter as the come in.
Use it to monitor a Linux box (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a cue from this post [slashdot.org] and write a script that uses vmstat and top to alter the scrolling speed and scroll something useful that shows the health of your box. You can cut one of the numbers pumped out by vmstat to set the scroll speed, and maybe grep, head, etc. something useful out of top to show on the screen. I'd write a little suggested script for you right here, but I have no idea what format your device wants its config file.
Put it back into work (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are some ideas for dynamically generated messages for use at work. (Assuming that you use a ticketing system at work.) Most of them use database backends that you can connect to using your favorite protocol. Find a useful way to display pertinent information on the display.
For example, do you have an overdue or high-priority ticket? Program it scroll a reminder. Do you queue tickets and handle them serially? Set it up to display the number of tickets in your queue and the header for the next ticket. Smaller helpdesk where you're responsible for managing systems? Display network metrics from your monitoring system. Managing helpdesk employees? Have it display metrics about your technicians.
Other fun stuff...if you have a swanky gaming rig at home - you could use it to monitor temperatures (ambient/case/CPU/GPU/Disk, etc). You could also pull CPU, disk, and network stats and display it as a histogram or bar.
FPS hud (Score:0, Interesting)
you could write a mod to have it display ammo and health on it and have nothing but the game world on your monitor
Re:Notification for everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't just say it, do it! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is by far the best suggestion I've seen thus far. Hours of entertainment!
Connect it to the Web (Score:2, Interesting)
Connect it to the web and allow anonymous people to send you messages which will be displayed on your device. Here's a website already doing this, maybe it'll give you some ideas:
http://www.notallmine.net/cam.asp [notallmine.net]
http://www.notallmine.net/howdone1.htm [notallmine.net]
Re:Notification for everything (Score:2, Interesting)
>:)
I see... an Asteroids-esque space ship during reentry.
That's about as stupid as the time that I read someone on /. saying that 4:3 looks like a guy in a paperhat...
Oh, now I see it.
Two words... (Score:3, Interesting)
packet sniffer
Re:Matrix (Score:3, Interesting)
toilet paper sensors..warning which stalls are nearly out.
notification of who didn't wash their hands after using the restroom
notification of when the coffee pot is nearly empty.
dupe'd slashdot articles
latest site brought to a screeching halt due to the /. effect
tracking the U.S. deficit in real-time
Use the good parts (Score:3, Interesting)
I would rip it open and use the LED matrices directly with a microcontroller. Vertical scrolling 5x7 text would look so much better, and non-text graphics would be cool too.
Re:Notification for everything (Score:3, Interesting)
The one you hear in the UK is the "two-second rule" - leave two seconds' gap between you and the car in front. As the guy in front passes something - lamp-post, pothole, cats-eye, whatever, say out loud, "Only a fool breaks the two-second rule." It takes about two seconds. If you're still saying that when you get to the object, you're too close. Double it for wet conditions.
The nice thing about that is, it scales with the speed.