Twitter Mention Mood Light

Twitter Mention Mood Light -- a mood light that alerts you when @username is mentioned on Twitter.

This is a simple intro in how to control your Arduino from Twitter. If you are new to Arduino Twitter / Arduino Processing Twitter / Arduino Python Twitter / Twitter Mood Light, then please refer to simpleTweet_00_processing  and simpleTweet_01_python (and How to install Python packages on Windows 7 ) for a crash course.

 

Step 1 Concept: Arduino {Processing / Python} Twitter

The Arduino Twitter mood light has been around for a few years. I made one in early 2010 and recently decided to update it for Twitter OAuth protocol (step 5.) This instructable has both the [ Arduino Processing Twitter ] and [ Arduino Python Twitter ] versions.

The general idea: You've got a LED generating a peaceful glow, cycling through a bunch of colors, and meanwhile you've got Processing or Python listening to Twitter for any mention of @yourUsername. When it finds a Twitter status with @yourUsername it writes to Arduino over Serial and Arduino changes the LED from peaceful glow to alert.

The circuit board (step 6) has two buttons: Reset and Send. The reset button changes the LED from "alert" back to "peaceful glow." The send button sends a Twitter status update to your Processing or Python layer, and from there on up to Twitter. When pressing the SEND button, hold it down until you see the flash of WHITE LIGHT (approx 1 second.)  This confirms the button push has been read by Arduino.

There is some confusion about Twitter Rate Limits . The Rate Limit is the number of times Twitter will let you hit it's servers per hour, currently 350 hits per hour. Go over that number and Twitter will block you. I made the same provision for this in both Processing and Python: wait 15 seconds between hits. In Processing, in void draw() , see delay(15000); . In the Python, in the while clause, see time.sleep(15).  This does not affect the timing of any button pushing or Serial calls.

The Arduino code is the same for both Processing and Python except when Arduino listens to Serial. Both Processing and Python pass an integer value of 1 (arduino.write(1) ) but Arduino receives a different value (numeric / ascii) from each, which is why you'll see these two lines in the Arduino code:

    if (serialMsg == 1) state = "mention"; // processing
    if (serialMsg == 49) state = "mention"; // python

This is because I'm not sure how to pass a string value of "mention " over Serial in Python. It's not critical, so I'll leave working as above, but if anyone has a solution for sending a string (arduino.write("mention") ), particularly in Python, please post in the comments below. 

The center of this project is the getMentions() function. It's interesting to compare how they look in Processing and in Python.

// Processing (java)
// search for any mention of @yourUsername
void getMention() {
  List mentions = null;
  try {
    mentions = twitter.getMentions();
  }
  catch(TwitterException e) {
    println("Exception: " + e + "; statusCode: " + e.getStatusCode());
}
  Status status = (Status)mentions.get(0);
  String newID = str(status.getId());
  if (oldID.equals(newID) == false){
    oldID = newID;
    println(status.getText()+", by @"+status.getUser().getScreenName());
   arduino.write(1); // arduino gets 1
  }
}

# Python
# search for any mention of @yourUsername
def getMention():
    status = api.GetReplies()
    newID = str(status[0].id)
    global oldID
    if (newID != oldID):
        oldID = newID
        print status[0].text+", by @"+status[0].user.screen_name
        arduino.write(1) # arduino gets 49

In both cases the id value received is in "long" format. By converting from "long" to "string" with str() we're able to compare the value and act on it. I had trouble doing that in long format. 

Comments

[klaurens]

Love your work man! can you do it with 4 normal leds?

[pdxnat]

Yes, you can do it w/ 4 normal leds. They have 2 prongs instead of 4. You might need different resistors between the LED & the microprocessor, might not. The wiring would be different, of course, but basically the same. The code to control it would be different, simpler probably. Test your buttons before soldering them in place, they don't always line up the way you think they will.

Check out the diagram...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Mention-Mood-Light/step6/Circuit-Board/
For each Button / LED pair:
Microprocessor -> resistor -> buttton ->(line A) resistor -> ground.
Microprocessor -> resistor -> buttton ->(line B) LED -> resistor -> microprocessor.

If you put it together, four buttons & four LEDs, what would you do with it?

Thanks for the props.

[klaurens]

I want to create the mood light like you have but what color you tweet, is what color light, lights up. I am really new to all of this and only got my first Arduino yesterday. And I am a twitter fanatic, so wanted to do this, but do not have RGB LED's.

[pdxnat]

Congrats on your first Arduino! You're going to have so much fun. The brilliant thing about making stuff from the ground up is that if you can dream it then you can make it.

FYI - you can get RGB LEDs for $2 ea here: http://bit.ly/upYpiY at Adafruit. That's a competitive price. This is the LED I used but I've got a funky cover on it that I found at a local electronic hobby shop.

Mood lights are a fun and pretty straight forward concept and a great start to integrating with twitter.

Do you prefer coding in "Processing" or "Python" or some other language? This mood light project includes the code for each. I was still learning Python so I thought it'd be fun to explore the differences. There are enough tutorials out there and all coding follows the same basic structure. I've also got SimpleTweet_00 (Processing) and SimpleTweet_01 (Python.)

Have fun!

[pdxnat]

oops, that 2nd line should include power...

Microprocessor -> resistor -> buttton ->(line B) >power< LED -> resistor -> microprocessor.