Posts Tagged ‘gadget’



Twitter Hack – How to Make an RFID Cat Tracker!

April 11th, 2009

Couple days ago, we saw the cat-tracking Tweeting Cat Door that will let you know when your cat has left the house. (and came back)  Now, we found something even better than that, an RFID cat tracker that will let you track the cat when he/she is within certain boundaries of RFID signals, a much better solution for those of you who either don’t have a cat door or simply want to track your cat within a specified area.

This gadget is called CATaLOG, cat tracking/logging system based on Arduino, RS232 RFID module, and Arduino Ethernet Shield.

rfid-twitter

The author Pete has open sourced the code so if you got some soldering skills, just get the parts, simply put it together, load the code, and you should be set to go so you can track your cat via twitter.  (You can see an example of the device working @BobbinAndTuffin.

bobbin

(screenshot of @BobbinAndTuffin)

The CATaLOG project aims to track our two cats Bobbin and Tuffin as they go in and out of the house so we can see which cat spends more time outside, what their favourite time to go out is, and also get sent SMS messages if a cat goes missing for a certain amount of time.

Great job Pete and make sure to let us know on any future Twitter Hacks via @TweetHacking.

CATaLOG Homepage

via hackedgadgets

Twitter Hack – DIY Tweeting Washing Machine!

April 8th, 2009

A perfect Twitter application is the one that uses 9 volt power for BS2 (Basic Stamp Microcontroller), connected serially to a server, and also “tweets” when your clothes are done, thus DIY Tweeting Washing Machine is born.

I am sure you can recall countless times waiting helplessly at a laundry room, now there’s a better solution, make yourself one of these tweeting washing machines.

tweeting-washing-machine

tweeting-washing-machine-2

You will need the following and a little hacking will be involved:

BS2 – Basic Stamp 2 or even CUBLOC modules work too. (or Arduino) – These are basically microcontrollers you can program in BASIC language, very easy to program.

BetaBrite – BetaBrite sells these giant LED modules which can easily be hooked up to a Basic Stamp to display messages.  Of course, these might actually have ethernet connectivity too, in which case you can “tweet” the status to Twitter.

Here’s a screenshot of what kinds of tweets you can expect after washing your clothes: (@pimpy3wash)

pimpy

Can you imagine now how helpful this gadget would be for you?

Twitter Hack – Baker Tweet Updates Baking Status on Twitter!

April 8th, 2009

Twitter Hacking has been going sorta crazy lately, with cool hacks like the Botannicals which can tell you when your plants need watering.

Of course, don’t forget about Baker Tweet, this gadget will “tweet” whatever is coming out of your oven, you can follow @albionsoven to see what Albion’s Oven is cooking.

According to the Baker Tweet page:

BakerTweet allows businesses to use Twitter to communicate in real-time about offers, pricing and stock from a device that can withstand kitchen peril and is much simpler to operate than a laptop or a mobile.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

baker-tweet-1

And here’s a video demo:

How It Works:

it’s a bakery-proof box that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter. The clever bit is that the baker can update their messages and things they’re selling using a simple web interface. Obviously not something that you’d do mid-bake but it’s an important feature for future-proofing the device.

This might come in handy for those of you bakers who need to know what’s coming out of your oven in real-time.  I see a lot of good applications for this in the near future for many bakeries out there.

via hackedgadgets