LooPing

A project to create a LED display to be put in the room, allowing people from IRC or other sources to send messages to the people inside.

Basic Idea

IRC bot that activates a rotating light (Gyrophare) when someone types a message in IRC. This can be useful e.g. in case people are waiting outside the door. A message can be optionally embedded in the message and displayed on the display.

Idea shamelessly copied from https://raumzeitlabor.de/wiki/Ping and https://raumzeitlabor.de/wiki/Ping%2B

Who

Currently working on the project:

• the_nihilant
• FergusL
• CapsLock

Decisions taken

• Implement a Blinkenlights compliant device as display
• Use an Arduino (with Ethernet shield) to drive the LED panel
• Resolution of the panel between 48x8 and 64x16
• Monochrome LEDs
• The display, including LED matrix, will be built from scratch

Suggestions

• Should be modular in some way: the input might come from other sources (Twitter, SMS, hidden button near the entrance, ...), and the output might go to other signals (recorded message through MPD for instance <AOL voice>You've got visitors!</AOL voice>).

Procrastinated decisions

• Should the display be reachable over IPv6?
• Does the IRC bot run from the Arduino itself?

Research

• Discover how much flash/RAM is needed for a Blinkenlights implementation on an Arduino UNO (the_nihilant)
• Discover how much flash/RAM is needed for the implementation of an IRC bot on an Arduino UNO (CapsLock)

Parts

Hardware

• LED display
• Rotating light (Gyrophare)
• Controller for the display and light
• Somewhere to run the IRC bot on (on the Arduino itself or on another system, maybe another Arduino or a RaspberryPi or any computer in the room or outside, provided the panel is reachable from there

Software

• IRC bot (standalone or Arduino)
• Display driver (Arduino)