Big Table

But when you fold it up, it gets small…

Small Package

I Decided to Build One

They had a bunch of pictures on their site that made it easy-ish to work out the dimensions. I used poplar for the box & table top and pine for the gate legs. Here’s how it went in my garage. Your lumber and tools may vary.

Materials List

• 3 ea. 12′  1 x 12 boards
• 3 ea. 8′  1×3 boards
• 3 ea. 8′  1×2 boards
• 2 ea. 30″ piano hinges
• 6 ea. little table feet
• 1 wooden dowel, 3/8″ @ 6″ or longer
• wood filler, brads, biscuits, & glue

Cut List (actual dimensions)

• 1 ea.  36 x 8 x 0.75 (top)
• 1 ea.  36 x 9.5 x 0.75 (bottom)
• 2 ea.  29 x 8 x 0.75 (sides)
• 4 ea.  34.5 x 2.5 x 0.75 (inside rails)
• 4 ea.  2.5 x 2.5 x 0.75 (inside blocks)
• 6 ea.  11.25 x 36 x 0.75 (for the tabletop)
• 2 ea.  28.875 x 1.5 x 0.75 (inboard gate legs)
• 2 ea.  30.5 x 1.5 x 0.75 (outboard gate legs)
• 6 ea.  14 x 1.5 x 0.75 (gate rails)

Tools

• Circular saw or table saw
• Router with chamfer, straight cut, and roundover bits
• Pneumatic brad nailer and an air compressor.
• Coping saw
• Biscuit joiner
• Clamps

What to do

Cut the tabletop boards to 36″, join them with biscuits & glue, then clamp them up. I made one 72 x 33.75″ tabletop and cut it in half, then I stacked them and ripped it to the correct size (36 x 28.25″). On reflection, it would be easier and better to use a big sheet of fancy plywood. I’d go thicker than 3/4″ too. Maybe 5/4.

Make the top & bottom boards from the leftover 1 x 12. Drill 3/8″ holes in the top & bottom. The box-top holes should be 3/8″ deep and about 7/8″ from each side. The box-bottom holes should go all the way through and located about 1-5/8″ from each side. Both should be centered along the board’s length.

Top of the Box

Cut slots for the gate legs to pass through the bottom of the table box. Mark where the legs hit the box and make your slot a little wider than that. Use your router & straight-cut bit for a neat edge, or a little coping saw if you’re steadier than I am.

Bottom of the Box

Cut the slots for biscuits in the top, bottom, and sides of the table box. Depending on your biscuit joiner’s design, you may not be able to do this after the braces are installed in the top & bottom, so do it now.

Side

Cut the hand-holds in the sides next. Drill a pair of 1″ holes, 3″ apart, centered 5″ from the top of each side. Use a coping saw to knock out the wood in between & sand it to shape. When you get the edges nice & straight, use a 1/4″ roundover bit on the inside and outside of the hole for a comfy grip.

Build the braces to go in the bottom and top of the box and attach them.

There are two 1 x 3 rails that run from end to end, and a block at each end (another piece of 1 x 3 @ 2.5″ long). For the bottom of the box, that’s it. Glue it to the bottom and hold it in place with some brads from underneath.
For the top, add some additional pieces of 1 x 3 against the box top so you can secure it with brads and not mess up your pretty tabletop.

This is the top brace. The bottom brace is simpler.

Attach the sides to the bottom and top. Use some biscuits & glue to stick it all together. Check for square and then use some brads through the sides into the braces to hold everything in place.

Attach the table leaves to the box using the piano hinges. Do this on a flat, clean surface to avoid marring your tabletop. Chamfer the edges of the tabletop and the narrow edges of the box top.

Gate Leg (x2)

Build the gate legs by attaching an inboard gate leg, outboard gate leg, & 3 rails. The tops of the legs should extend 3/4″ above the top rail. The outboard leg should be 3/4″ longer at the bottom than the inboard. Use FF biscuits and glue to hold it together. Use a rasp or handsaw to knock a little bit of material off of the front corner of the inboard leg so it will clear the piano hinge. You’ll see why when you fit it later.

Drill 3/8″ holes in the gate legs 3/8″ deep centered in each end of the leg’s inboard side. Cut some dowels to hold the gate legs in place. The top one should be about 3/4″ long, and the bottom one should be about 1-1/2″. Fit it together to see how it works.

Carefully dry-fit the legs and make sure you like the way they operate. When you have it fit the way you want, put a dab of glue on the bottom end of the bottom dowel and put it all in place. Hold it with a little tape until the glue dries. Cut any excess dowel flush with the bottom of the box. Once this goes together, the only way to get the gate legs out is to cut them, so fit carefully.

Install the table feet. I put 4 on the bottom of the box, plus one on each gate leg.

Fill and sand the brad holes. Sand everything smooth, particularly the tabletop. Prime & paint it and you’re done.

It works!

This makes a very spacious desk that you can set up to work from home for a day then stow away when you’re done. I tried it.

If I had it to do over…

I’d use heavier material for the top. The 3/4″ poplar just isn’t very beefy when you lean on the edge of the table. Maybe a nice 5/4″ birch plywood top with some hardwood tacked to the edge.

I’d at least make the tabletop out of boards that run lengthwise, not side-to-side. I think that’s giving me even more bend and stress on the biscuit joints.

Eh. Next time.

1. Go to Stanley’s Homemade Polish Sausage on McDowell Rd in Phoenix.
2. Approach the woman behind the counter and say “I’d like some bacon, please.”
   Be firm, but polite. Do not risk losing your Stanley’s privileges.
3. Take the bacon home, remove the skin, and cook it.
4. Eat it.

Mmmm, bacon.

It’s awesome. Meaty like ham. Not at all salty, not sweet, and nicely smoky. Buy more than you need because you’ll eat more than you should.

They’re great for my girl’s room for three reasons:

• The books face straight out (so you can see ‘em)
• It sits flat to the wall (12″), so I can put it behind her door.
• It’s sturdy enough that she could climb it (not that she should)

Here’s the finished product:

Hooray, books!

I deviated from the original plans in a few places:

• No arches. I didn’t want to cut them so I tell myself they didn’t match her room anyway.
• Routed outside edges and rails dress it up a bit
• Taller shelves (15″ instead of 12″)
• Notches for her chair rail & baseboards

I’m particularly happy with how the baseboards came out, but I sort of messed one thing up: when I routed the outside edges, I didn’t stop at the baseboards. The round-over goes all the way to the floor. Whoops.

This was a great project. It took me 2 days of carpentry (with the assistance of a 5-year-old), plus a day of painting.  I spent about $90 on materials & a few tools that made it go smoother. I’d recommend it of you have an unused wall in your place.

Now with more mouse

It’s a mouse. Only… mousier!

It’s so simple and brilliant. I’m actually ashamed I didn’t think of it.

You can get full details on the build at Instructables.

Some of the highlights:

• Warning: this project involves taxidermy
• Step 1: Acquire mice
• Step 4: Shave (wetware) mouse

It just… I can’t explain… I think I have something in my eye.

I decided to document my own attempts at problem solving. Hopefully the engineering is better than theirs, but I feel confident my problems had less reason to be solved in the first place.

The Problem

Sometimes I forget to close my garage door. I’ve left it open all day and all night. This is a perfect example of a problem that barely needed to be solved in the first place. Right in my wheelhouse.

Solving It

What I need is an unmissable indicator of my forgetfulness. I’m thinking of a light that comes on when the garage door is open.  Ideally, one that I can see while watching TV or laying in bed.

Design

The concept is simple:
There’s an LED, a power source, a switch, and a couple resistors.

Parts

The switch is a magnetic reed switch. It’s normally open, but if a magnet cozies up to it, it gets all closed. Perfect. I don’t know the model number, because I just found it in my garage, left over from when they installed the security system. You could get one for about $3, and you could go wireless for $50.

The power source is a couple of AAA batteries. I happened to have a battery holder that size lying around, so that’s what I went with. I think you could get a new one for $2.

The LED is a panel mount model I bought just for this. It is green, and snaps into a 1/4″ hole.

According to my math, I need a minimum of 40 Ω of resistance to avoid burning up my LED @ 3V. All I had were a couple of 100 Ω resistors, so I went with that. In parallel, that gives me 50 Ω plus the resistance of the wire & switch, so I won’t burn the LED up.

Then there’s some miscellaneous wire, solder and heat-shrink tubing to keep everything neat. Oh, and a magnet. I happened to have one of those too.

Assembly

Most of the stuff sits inside the house. I picked out a nice location in a closet and drilled a hole for the LED. I soldered up the battery pack, resistors, LED, and the leads to the switch and fed them through into the garage.

At the other end, I just had to stick the switch in place and mount the magnet to the garage door. And by “mount,” I mean “stick it to the garage door because it’s a magnet.”

Victory is Mine

After just a little tweaking to get the position of the magnet just right, I have a working light. It has already reminded me to close the garage door once, and I expect it will have a long life saving me from myself.

And you can vote for your favorites.

http://thereifixedit.com/

Magic.

It’s A Fundamental Truth of Requirements Gathering that the longer you talk to someone about custom software, the more their answer boils down to two requirements:

• Make me a button called “Do My Job.”
• Make it do my job.

Then they get thoughtful for a moment and add a third requirement:

Just... build me one of these

• Make sure only I can press the button.

Some of them will even joke “You know, like an Easy Button.”

Those Easy Buttons from Staples are awesome, but they have one small flaw: they don’t actually do anything useful. It’s my aim to change that.

Let’s Make a Button!

What we need is an Easy Button Hack, so I’m going to build a USB Easy Button. I found most everything I needed from jro’s project on instructibles and a flickr photoset by tommybear. Plus, I’ve been dying to try one of these U-HIDs.

What you’ll need:

• An Easy Button (or Botón Fácil if it suits you better) $4.99
• A U-HID Nano and USB Cable (with shipping) $42.00
• A Modular Harness for the U-HID (optional) $9.00
• Soldering iron & solder
• Wire (if you didn’t buy the wiring harness)
• Dremel or a chisel
• Hot glue or silicone
• Small phillips screwdriver
• PC running Windows XP

Step 1: Program your U-HID Nano

Plug the USB cable and wiring harness (if you’re using it) into the U-HID Nano. If you’re going to have the button send a single command like me, just leave the black (ground) wire and the gray (pin 10) wire long enough to reach the PCB. We won’t be using the other 7. If you want to use the button to close more than one switch at a time (for example, to send “Ctrl + Alt + Del”), leave one wire per button, plus the ground wire.

That's a U-HID Nano

I hooked the wires up to a temporary switch at this point for programming the thing. You could go ahead and hook it up to the Easy Button. Just scan down a little to see which contacts to use.

You program the U-HID Nano with U-Config, a software package available from the manufacturer. It’s a pretty easy process, and the Technical Manual was easy to read.

I’m not going to go into the details here except to note that a driver install and firmware update were required to get it working on my machine. Both of those processes are clearly documented on their site. I set it up so that when pin 10 goes to ground, it will send the macro “L Alt, F8″. It seems to send the scancodes fast enough that my machine counts it as a combination keypress.

Step 2: Take the Easy Button Apart

Turn the button over, and you’ll see four black pads on the bottom. Pull them off to expose the screws. Be sure to save the pads so you can stick them back on. Go ahead and take the batteries out while you’re there.

Desolder Everything

Remove all 4 screws to release the silver ring and red button from the assembly. You’ll be left with just the guts of the machine. Inside, you should see a white button. That is the heart of the Easy Button and the only part of the original electronics we’re actually going to make use of.

All of these things have to go, so desolder and discard them:

• The black capacitor
• The resistor closest to the button
• The red speaker wires
• The black & white power wires

If you don’t know what those things are, don’t sweat it. Take a look tommybear’s photos on flickr. He’s better at this than I am.

Remove the 2 screws, and take the PCB off of the assembly. Set the metal spring aside. We want to keep that because it gives us a satisfying CLICK when the button is pushed.

Remove the 4 screws that hold the little mezzanine level on. You may have to pry it up just a bit if the hot glue below is sticking it down. Take the metal slugs out and discard them. They’re just stuck in there with a little hot glue and you can pick them out without ruining anything. I guess you could leave them if you have the room & like the heft. Remove the speaker too.

Use your dremel or a chisel to take out any little plastic bits that are in your way. Just remember that you have to leave the 4 posts that hold the mezzanine level up.

Step 3: Put the U-HID in the Easy Button

Fit it like this

Solder it like this (the gray wire goes on the side of the gap closest to the button)

Find a way that the whole U-HID assembly will fit inside the button, then use some hot glue or silicone to stick it in place.

Replace the mezzanine, metal spring, and PCB. Now comes the soldering. The U-HID Nano is going to just sit there and wait for pin 10 to touch the ground pin. We’re going to use the normally-open momentary switch inside the Easy Button to interrupt that connection, so the circuit is only closed while the Easy Button is depressed. Solder the gray and black wires as shown.

It would be a good idea to test it at this point to make sure it works before you put everything back together. Use a little hot glue to make sure the wires do not interfere with the holes in the PCB. Those are what keep the button aligned properly, and if they’re blocked, you can’t push the button.

Step 4: Let The Wire Out

Cut a slot for the wire

Cut a slot in the silver ring that’s just big enough for the wire to get out of the enclosure. I made mine a left-handed Easy Button (made to sit in the left side of the computer). You could hook yours up backward or cut a channel through the battery compartment and have it come straight out the “front.”

Step 5: Replace the Ring and Button

It should only go back together one way: with the battery compartment farthest away from you, the “easy” label should be right-side up and the Staples logo on the ring will be directly toward you. Replace all 4 screws in the bottom of the case and use a little hot glue to stick the rubber pads back on. You’re done with the hardware: you’ve built an Easy Button that actually does something.

Step 6: Write the Software that Actually Does Your Job

If you’re able to buy software that does your job, you could use that too. Implementation of a security system so that only you can push your button is left as an exercise to the reader. For extra style points, make sure your software ends up playing a “That was easy” sound effect when the job is done.

Step 7: Assign a Hotkey to Your Software

If you are having the button send a key combination that is recognized by the system already (like Ctrl + Alt + Del), you can skip this step.

Create a folder in your Start Menu called “Easy Button” and create one shortcut inside the folder called “thatwaseasy.lnk”. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Click the “Shortcut key” field and press the hotkey combination you told the Easy Button to send (in my case, Alt + F8). This shortcut has to be in your start menu or on your desktop. You can set the shortcut property of any shortcut, but it only works if the shortcut is in the right place.

TA DA!

A Finished USB Easy Button

For about $50 you could have one just like this. If you pay close attention to jro’s project, you could use a recycled keyboard instead and do this for about $5. Now get out there and build your own.

If you just want to get the package, you can download it directly or grab a PPD.

Manipulate an Ambient Orb through a serial port

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• EXAMPLE
• DESCRIPTION
• EXPORTED HASHES
• METHODS
• AUTHOR

NAME

Win32::AmbientOrb – Manipulate an Ambient Orb through a serial port

SYNOPSIS

  use Win32::AmbientOrb;

EXAMPLE

  use Win32::AmbientOrb qw(:ALL);

  my $port = "COM1:";
  Win32::AmbientOrb::Port($port); #set port to COM1
  InitializePort();               #set serial port settings
  PagerIgnore(1);                 #don't listen to the pager network

  # go straight to red
  my @red = (176, 0, 0);
  DirectColor(\@red);

  # quick transition from blue to red
  my @blue = (0, 0, 176);
  TransitionColor(\@blue, \@red, 20, 5);

  # slow transition from red to blue
  TransitionColor(\@red, \@blue, 50, 100);

  # clean up
  CloseOrb();

DESCRIPTION

The Win32::AmbientOrb module lets you manipulate an Ambient Orb connected to a Win32 machine through a serial port.

It uses Win32::SerialPort for serial port communication.

EXPORTED HASHES

Two hashes are exported by default, %OrbColor and %OrbRGB.

%OrbColor

Maps from color names to Color IDs useful for ColorAnim( ). Available color names are:

 • Red          => 0
 • LightRed     => 1
 • DarkOrange   => 2
 • Orange       => 3
 • LightOrange  => 4
 • DarkYellow   => 5
 • Yellow       => 6
 • LimeGreen    => 7
 • PaleGreen    => 8
 • GreenMinus3  => 9
 • GreenMinus2  => 10
 • GreenMinus1  => 11
 • Green        => 12
 • GreenPlus1   => 13
 • GreenPlus2   => 14
 • PaleAqua     => 15
 • Aqua         => 16
 • DarkAqua     => 17
 • Cyan         => 18
 • DarkCyan     => 19
 • LightBlue    => 20
 • SkyBlue      => 21
 • BlueMinus2   => 22
 • BlueMinus1   => 23
 • Blue         => 24
 • DeepBlue     => 25
 • VeryDeepBlue => 26
 • Violet       => 27
 • Purple       => 28
 • LightPurple  => 29
 • Magenta      => 30
 • MagentaPlus1 => 31
 • MagentaPlus2 => 32
 • MagentaPlus3 => 33
 • MagentaPlus4 => 34
 • MagentaPlus5 => 35
 • White        => 36

%OrbRGB

Contains the mapping of color ids to RGB arrays useful for DirectColor( ).

METHODS

Port( [$port] )

Sets or returns the port that the Ambient Orb is connected to. Default is COM1:

InitializePort( )

Initializes the serial port for communication with the Ambient Orb. Settings are:

 • BAUD: 19200
 • PARITY: N
 • DATA: 8
 • STOP: 1

ClosePort( )

Cleans up the port object.

ColorAnim( [$color], [$animation] )

Changes the color of the Orb using the default color and animation settings. Colors are listed above in %OrbColor Animations are 0-9

        ANIMATION
 • 0 almost imperceptibly slow
        ...
 • 7 very fast
 • 8 crescendo effect
 • 9 heartbeat effect

DirectColor( \@rgb )

Sets the orb instantly to the color specified in the 3-element array @rgb. Red, green and blue values should be between 0 and 176.

TransitionColor( \@rgb0, \@rgb1, $steps, $wait )

Performs a slow transition from the color in @rgb0 to the one in @rgb1. Sets the orb instantly to the color specified in the 3-element array @rgb0, then sends $steps updates, one update every $wait milliseconds until it reaches the color specified in @rgb1. Red, green and blue values should be between 0 and 176.

PagerIgnore( $ignore )

Instructs the orb not to listen to the pager network. If you don’t call this, the orb will keep changing its color to reflect whatever channel it was listening to before you plugged in the serial port.

AUTHOR

Andy Allen

What You Will Need
Connecting the Hardware
Installing Perl and Required Packages
Creating a Color Script
Installing the Service
Web-Connected Orbs
Other Uses For the Orb

You Will Need:

HARDWARE

• A Windows XP or 2003 Server host
• An Ambient Orb (or several)
• A Hardware Developer’s Kit from Ambient (one per orb)
• Long enough serial cables to put the orb where you want.

SOFTWARE

• Perl (I used ActiveState). I’ve included ppm commands below.
• Aldo Calpini’s Win32::API package
  ppm install Win32-API
• Dave Roth’s Win32::Daemon package
  ppm install http://roth.net/perl/packages/Win32-Daemon.ppd
• Bill Birthisel’s Win32::SerialPort package
  I didn’t use a ppd, I installed it the old-fashioned way (as described in the README, but you could try finding a ppd with a Google search
• Win32::AmbientOrb
  ppm install http://powerfulmojo.com/tools/ppm/Win32-AmbientOrb.ppd
• The service files in AmbientOrbService.zip

Connecting the Hardware

• Plug the serial exension cable (if you’re using one) into your serial port.
• Plug the HDK into the serial extension cable
• Plug the Orb into the HDK.
• Plug the Power adapter (supplied with the Orb) into the HDK.

The orb will go through its regular power-up routine, then start displaying the DJIA channel (or whatever it was most recently tracking).

Installing Perl and Packages

Install Perl and get all of the packages above installed in the order listed. If you use the ppm commands provided, it will link the modules’ documentation right into your html documentation so you can see how to use everything. You will only be using Win32::AmbientOrb directly. It depends on Win32::SerialPort (which depends on Win32::API), and we will need Win32::Daemon to get it up and running as a service.

Creating a color script

The service will need a script to tell it what color to turn the orb. A color script can be written in just about any language, it just has to print an integer to the console representing the correct color. Possible colors are:

0	Red		24	Blue
3	Orange		27	Violet
6	Yellow		30	Magenta
12	Green		35	Red-Magenta
18	Cyan		36	White

You can use any integer between 0 and 36. The ones I didn’t list work out about like you’d expect (i.e. 9 is yellowish-green). My color script is in Perl and is available below. A blue orb means all builds are successful, a red orb means at least one build is failed, and a yellow orb means the CruiseControl server was unreachable.

Here is an example of a (very simple) batch file color script:

    @echo 24

It’s not very interesting, because it just returns the code for “blue.” The default script looks like this:

 1   #!perl
 2   use strict;
 3   use LWP::Simple;
 4
 5   my $color = getColor();
 6   print $color;
 7
 8   sub getColor {
 9       my $color = 6;
 10      for (my $retry = 0; $retry < 3; $retry++) {
 11          if ($color == 6) {
 12              sleep 1 if ($retry > 0);
 13              $color = getColorRequest();
 14          }
 15      }
 16      return $color;
 17  }
 18
 19  sub getColorRequest  {
 20      my $color;
 21      my $dashboard = get('http://cchost/ccnet');
 22      if ($dashboard) {
 23          if ($dashboard =~ />Fail/) { $color = 0; }
 24          else { $color = 24; }
 25      }
 26      else {
 27          $color = 6;
 28      }
 29      return $color;
 30  }

It is a little more interesting: it makes a request to a server named cchost and searches the response for the word “Fail.” If it finds it, at least one build is failed and the orb should be red. If no builds are failed, the orb should be blue. In the event that the server is unavailable, it will retry the request twice more, but if it still can’t reach cchost it will turn the orb yellow.

Installing the Service

Now that the orb is hooked up and you’ve got your color script written, here’s how to install the service to make it go.

Put the files in place

Create a folder named C:\Program Files\AmbientOrb and copy everything in this .zip into it: AmbientOrbService.zip. Put your color script in the same folder.

Install the Service

You will need the script installOrbService.pl (or one like it) to install the AmbientBuild Windows Service on your host.

 1   #!perl
 2   ###########################
 3   # installOrbService.pl
 4   ###########################
 5   use Win32::Daemon;
 6   my $svcName = 'AmbientBuild';
 7   %Hash = (
 8       name    =>  $svcName,
 9       display =>  $svcName,
 10      description => 'Ambient Build Monitor',
 11      path    =>  'c:\\perl\\bin\\perl.exe',
 12      user    =>  '',
 13      pwd     =>  '',
 14      parameters =>'c:\\Progra~1\\AmbientOrb\\orbService.pl',
 15  );
 16
 17  my $action = $ARGV[0];
 18  if (lc($action) eq '-i') {
 19      if( Win32::Daemon::CreateService( \%Hash ) ) {
 20          print "Successfully added.\n";
 21      }
 22      else {
 23          print "Failed to add service: ",
 24           Win32::FormatMessage(Win32::Daemon::GetLastError()),
 25           "\n";
 26      }
 27  }
 28  elsif (lc($action) eq '-u') {
 29      if( Win32::Daemon::DeleteService( "", $svcName ) ) {
 30          print "Successfully removed.\n";
 31      }
 32      else {
 33          print "Failed to remove service: ",
 34           Win32::FormatMessage(Win32::Daemon::GetLastError()),
 35           "\n";
 36      }
 37  }
 38  else {
 39      print "Unknown action ",
 40      "(use -i for install, -u for uninstall).\n";
 41  }

You only need to run this script once to install the service. It takes one argument: -i for install or -u for uninstall, then prints a short status message indicating whether the action was successful.

Line 14 points to the script that will be started when the Windows Service starts. That’s our orbService.pl script. If you write your own Windows Service, you would put its pathname here, using the short pathname (with no spaces). If you fill out a username and password in lines 12-13, the script will run as that account. If you leave it blank, it will run as System.

Note that line 14 should contain the orbService.pl script as written, not your color script.

Configure the Service

The service looks for a file named orbService.config, which can have any of the following values. If a value is not specified, it will use the default listed.

While the service is running, changes to this configuration file will be automatically loaded the next time the script checks its messages (within 2 seconds by default). If you leave the service configured as shown, it will run the ccnetWeb.pl script every 30 seconds.

Web Orbs

In my environment, we have three orbs and only two HDKs. The service is installed on both hosts with HDKs attached, but that leaves one orb out of the loop. To update it, one of the servers is also configured to update the orb using its webOrbs configuration parameter. This orb is updated using Ambient’s Web Developer API.

Other uses

This service was written to make it easy to monitor anything using an Ambient Orb. With a different color script and polling interval, you could make it monitor just about anything. During testing I had it monitor hockey scores, crude oil prices, and network traffic (not all at the same time). If you do something like that, I’d like to hear about it, so please let me know.

Previous Work

The Orb provides a great, at-a-glance indication of build status for a continuously integrated software project. The subjects of Continuous Integration and its benefits are discussed in a number of other places, so I won’t cover them here. Likewise, the use of an Orb using the Ambient Web API is covered admirably by Michael Swanson, so you can read that there.

Problems

The two problems I found were:

1. Update lag

   The Ambient pager network does not change the color of an orb for 10 – 30 minutes. I can break a build in seconds. An ideal system would indicate the status of software builds in real time with no lag.

2. Integration of multiple software projects

   I work in a shop that produces a lot of different projects at a time. We currently have eleven builds managed by CruiseControl.NET. Using NAnt events as described elsewhere did not provide an easy way to measure how many builds were successful moment-by-moment.

Solution

Lucky for me, the first problem can be solved with hardware. As a software guy, I love when that happens. Ambient produces a Hardware Developer’s Kit. You put an Orb on one end and a serial port on the other, and you’re in business: you can update the orb instantly to any color you like.

Unfortunately, the cable is only 3 feet long, making the orb’s location a bit constrained. This was easily solved with a cheap 50-foot serial cable. As a bonus, the $45 (with shipping) HDK frees me from the $80/year subscription to Ambient’s developer channel, so the hardware investment will pay for itself within the first year.

To have the Orb reflect the status of multiple software projects all at once, I polled the CruiseControl.NET server. For now, I’m using a screen scrape of the CruiseControl dashboard. With a little gumption, I could probably poll the same port that CCTray uses.

Keeping in mind that I might not always use CruiseControl as my CI solution, and that I might change the way I poll it for build status, I thought it would be nice to keep those changes insulated from the core orb updating service.

I’m a native speaker of Perl, so that’s the language all of this is in. I used Win32::Daemon by Dave Roth to create a Windows service in Perl. The service talks on the serial port using Bill Birthisel’s Win32::SerialPort package and updates the colors using my Win32::AmbientOrb package.

How to Do It Yourself

This Walkthrough describes how to set up the whole system.