I just released a new version of my BetaBrite sign library, and I
decided it would be neat if I had a service so that people could try out
the library.
I’ve created a DRb service that lets you write to my BetaBrite LED sign
and take a photo of it. The service has 3 methods, “write_simple” which
just takes a string and writes it to the sign, “write” which takes a
BetaBrite::String and writes it, and “take_photo” that returns a photo
of the sign. Both methods that write to the sign will also return a
photo of the sign.
Here’s a simple example:
require ‘drb’
require ‘rubygems’
require ‘betabrite’
DRb.start_service()
obj = DRbObject.new(nil, ‘druby://eviladmins.org:9000’)
File.open(“out.jpg”, ‘wb’) { |a|
a.write obj.write_simple(“Seattle.rb”)
}
There are, of course, a few caveats… First, if the message you create
is too long, it will scroll. I have a crappy webcam, so scrolling
messages won’t look very good. I haven’t done much error checking in
the server, so please be nice. I could shut this thing down at any
time, I don’t guarantee that my server is up, and as always YMMV, etc.
For a slightly more complicated example and a sample photo, check out my
blog
entry:
http://tenderlovemaking.com/2006/09/28/new-ruby-betabrite-002/
Hope everyone likes it!
