Stabby MCstab stab, NXT Spike, programmed in perl, powered by twitter, he rocks your world

I couldn't just do, an "I love twitter" post, or twitter is so awesome it's my new favorite form of communication. No I have to show it's awesomeness.And that's why I made a robot that can knife people over twitter. That's right, I strapped a knife to spike, and you can control him over twitter. I am going to get stickam going so you can watch and control the robot over twitter, but only for the next few hours. To extend the tail send an @twitrnxtbot tail to retract the tail send a @twitrnxtbot retract. To get him to move forward send a @twitrnxtbot anythinggoeshere. Watch him. Control him.

So just to sum this up, if you ever had one of those moments when you wanted to stab someone on the other end of the computer...you can now.

As for some NXT resources, I know that all of you read english, and about half of you can read another language as well. You might need a translator on this one but it's a good resource: http://compilamasnaoroda.blogspot.com/ .

As for spike, I am thinking of adding features that let him communicate with the world, such as, the ability to tweet, that he is stuck, or he has attacked something of his own volition.

I modified the twitter code, that was originally made to display growl messages from here.

use Sys::Hostname;
use strict;
use warnings;
use LEGO::NXT;
use LEGO::NXT::Constants qw(:DEFAULT);
use LEGO::NXT::MacBlueComm;
use Mac::Growl ':all';
use Net::Twitter;
use Date::Format;
my $capsule = int(rand(99));
my $dev = new LEGO::NXT::MacBlueComm('/dev/tty.NXT-DevB-1');
my $bt = new LEGO::NXT( $dev );
my $speed = 100;
my $tachoticks = 1000;
my $tailFtac = 1000;
my $tailBtac = 1000;
my $tailSpeed = 100;
my $tailBSpeed = -100;
my $backSpeed = -100;
my $app = 'Growl/Twitter';
my @names = ('New Tweet');
my $bob = "test";
my $tail = "tail";
my $retract = "retract";
RegisterNotifications($app, \@names, [$names[0]]);

my $tweet = Net::Twitter->new( username=>'twitrnxtbot', password=>'password' );

my $last_id = undef;
my $switch = 0;

while(1)
{
my @tt = ();

if($last_id)
{
@tt = $tweet->friends_timeline({count => 5, since_id => $last_id });
}
else
{
@tt = $tweet->friends_timeline({count => 5 });
}

foreach my $t (@{$tt[0]})
{
my $target = $t->{text};
if($target =~ m/$tail/i){
$bt->set_output_state( $NXT_NORET, $NXT_MOTOR_A, $tailSpeed, $NXT_MOTOR_ON|$NXT_REGULATED, $NXT_REGULATION_MODE_MOTOR_SPEED, 0, $NXT_MOTOR_RUN_STATE_RUNNING, $tailFtac );
}elsif($target =~ m/$retract/i) {
$bt->set_output_state( $NXT_NORET, $NXT_MOTOR_A, $tailBSpeed, $NXT_MOTOR_ON|$NXT_REGULATED, $NXT_REGULATION_MODE_MOTOR_SPEED, 0, $NXT_MOTOR_RUN_STATE_RUNNING, $tailBtac );
}
else
{
print $target;
$bt->set_output_state( $NXT_NORET, $NXT_MOTOR_B, $speed, $NXT_MOTOR_ON|$NXT_REGULATED, $NXT_REGULATION_MODE_MOTOR_SPEED, 0, $NXT_MOTOR_RUN_STATE_RUNNING, $tachoticks );
$bt->set_output_state( $NXT_NORET, $NXT_MOTOR_C, $speed, $NXT_MOTOR_ON|$NXT_REGULATED, $NXT_REGULATION_MODE_MOTOR_SPEED, 0, $NXT_MOTOR_RUN_STATE_RUNNING, $tachoticks );
$bt->keep_alive($NXT_NORET);
}
PostNotification($app, $names[0], $t->{user}{screen_name}, $t->{text});

printf("%s: %s\n", $t->{user}{screen_name}, $t->{text});
print "sleep 4\n";

sleep(4);
}

$switch = 0;
print "sleep 4\n";
sleep(4);
}

exit;

Creative Network Diagram

Job hate, originally uploaded by bsdpunkblog.

Ok so in actuality traffic was not rerouted through the altigen (a hybrid POTS/VOIP) phone system, it felt that way becuase it would multicast to every device on the network, every few seconds with 8 packets, and honestly, that's a shitload of garbage traffic. And while it still maintains my greatest hate for a network device(really just a crappy windows 2000 server with some proprietary grossness on top), the Juniper Netscreen 25 was fast approaching the same title. The punch boards were ugly and unprotected and the dell and net gear switches drove me crazy. So I drew this diagram, with some artistic license.