/chatlight

Analyze an IRC chatroom and light up a representative light sculpture

Primary LanguagePython

# What's This?

This is an IRC bot that analyzes traffic on a channel and uses it to output to a light art installation to physically and visually bridge the gap between the virtual world and the physical one.

 # Dependencies # Programs ## chatlight

This program connects to an IRC channel, analyzes by keywords, and produces json messages over a ZeroMQ PUB socket (bound) that describe the state of the channel and related events.

 ## watch_reports

The watch_reports program connects to the ZeroMQ PUB socket that chatlight publishes on and converts the json messages to instructions for running the 2 blink counters for each light on the physical sculpture. These instructions are sent over serial in a binary checksummed format to the arduino.

 ## chatlight (arduino)

The arduino sketch listens on the serial input and also operates the blinkers. It defaults to a "scan" that makes a red light move back and forth along the top (to show that it has not got instructions yet).

 # Example

These both run in parallel.

./watch_reports tcp://127.0.0.1:23000
./chatlight irc.example.org nick34231 \#channel tcp://0.0.0.0:23000
# TODO
  • usage for both programs
 # Tests

To run unit tests, use:

nosetests -vv tests