Door Notes
Remotely Updatable Door Sign

This project is very simple from a hardware standpoint. It uses a serial vacuum fluorescent character display (VFD) housed in a custom acrylic case attached to my office door. On the other side of the door is a USB to serial converter that is connected to the USB port of my office computer. The computer is running a program written in Processing that checks a file on my web account every minute and downloads a list telling it what to put on the display. I can update the display list from anywhere in the world through a form on a web page. (There's also a short PHP program involved in the chain of events.)

Any number of items can be displayed in rotation, each being shown for about 5 seconds. In addition to entering the full text directly into a form on a web page, I also established several macros that allow me to save key strokes (or finger strokes on the iPhone.) For example entering “/oh” will display my office hours, “/tm” will display the time of day and /pt will ask Processing to calculate and display the percentage of the current academic term that has elapsed. In addition to the VFD display, the housing also holds a group of r-g-b LEDs which can be turned on and off with a macro command if I need to grab someone's attention.

To what practical use can this be put? So far I have used it to notify people waiting that I am running little late for an appointment and as a way to advertise upcoming events. I also have a command that will display a random cliché or common phrase picked from a list of several thousand just to entertain.

I originally created another version of this project using an Arduino and Flash, but converting it to Processing allowed me to simplify things a fair amount.

Namespace

Blink Box

Light Lunch Box

Standard Device