The Terrorism Threat Level Alerter is a fine piece of artwork that is as attractive as it is useful. The current threat level is clearly indicated by one of the five colored lights, and the threat level is continuously updated via a wireless connection to an internet-enabled personal computer.
Notes:
The project is basically completed (and I don’t think the GUI looks half bad!). I apologize for holding out so long on releasing the code; its not that I don’t want to share my half-baked scripting until its ready, but that I am too chicken to open the subversion repository on my local computer to the big bad world. Anyway, for now I’m just releasing an archive of the code: tta
There is also a fine movie of the lights blinking: http://files.cibomahto.com/tta/MVI_0081.AVI
Great project, thanks for sharing the code.
Using the tea-lights was a really good idea, looks nice in the video.
It’s a shame to have a cable hanging off though, since you went to the effort of making it wirelessly controllable. Do you have room in the enclosure for some batteries?
Thanks Paul! Sharing the code was my pleasure :-).
The enclosure is actually a painted block of wood. I was thinking it might be possible to route out a section of it and put all the electronics inside of it, but i suppose it would be easier to find a decent project box to put it into. I don’t think batteries would last too long though- the LED arrays are drawing almost a watt of power if I remember correctly.
That would look great above my fireplace! However, I’d probably want it to display pollution levels or something…
oooh, that would be cool too. Any idea where you could pull data on that from? The device itself is nothing but a dumb array of lights, it could be adopted to anything really.