I'm 17 and received a NerdKit for Christmas (thanks, dad!) and quickly picked up the different style of programming and thought processes required. I remembered reading about someone using an Arduino to make a doorbell that sent a tweet when rung. I thought, can I do this with my NerdKit? Of course!

(Click to see the TwitPic page)

I used code examples from the Morse Code Decoder project and the Crystal Real Time Clock tutorial to read the state of the pushbutton and disable the button for a certain amount of time, and the Buttons, Switches, and Pull-up Resistors section of the Digital Calipers DRO tutorial to wire the pushbutton.

Basically, the NerdKit waits until the pushbutton is pressed, sends a "Button pushed." message over the serial port, then enables interrupts and starts the clock, which essentially disables the pushbutton for a set period of time.

I didn't want someone to "abuse" the button and send mass amounts of tweets and photos; this would freeze up my computer and internet connection. For testing purposes I set this to 5 seconds, but in a realistic environment you would set it higher, like a few minutes.

I wrote a quick program that monitors the serial port for that "Button pressed." message, and when it finds one it will take a photo from the selected webcam, upload it to TwitPic, then tweet "Doorbell rung!" along with the time and the link to the TwitPic photo to my Twitter channel.

I made a quick video you can watch on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVPgxYO7jEg

And here is the link to the Twitter account I made to test it:

http://twitter.com/apitestground

Steven you are awesome!! Great project.

Ralph

That is a fantastic project Steven, keep up the great work!

Humberto

I'm really interested in doing this project. I just have a question on how would the signal coming through the USB from the micro controller connects with the Webcam and twitter? I'm so confuse right now. Please give me a hint on how it is done.

Kayla

Did you use Visual Basic to create the program that is in your video?

Hey Steven,

That is totally awesome. At 17, hum, I guess I was pretty much 'Beavis and/or Butthead' if that means anything to the other old folks. Glad to see our (computer) scientific future isn't as dark as some assume!

Hey Steven, could you help out Singlecoilx3 with his need to understanding sms text messaging tied to the Nerdkit like you did with your great doorbell project.

Ralph

OOps, sorry here is the link to Singlecoilx3's thread.

Ralph