

Express your wrath digitally - pingswept
http://angerlights.com

======
jobytaffey
According to the docs it's using Linux on a smartphone class ARM (AT91SAM9G20)
with the ethernet MAC on-chip <http://rascalmicro.com/docs/software-guts.html>

The hardware should have no problem maxing out its own network connection.
Whether the application software can keep up would be my question.

It's clearly going to perform much better than a nanode <http://nanode.eu/>
Which is being pitched as an HTTP enabled sensor node, still relying on
Pachube or other cloud services.

But, the Rascal may have enough grunt to run its own services. I wonder how
capable it would be of servicing many simultaneous connections? (running
Twisted/Node/etc.) Perhaps RAM is the limiting factor?

~~~
pingswept
(Hi Joby. Why am I acquainted with everyone in this thread?)

I think you're right that RAM is the limiting factor. Right now, the uWSGI
application server is using ~30% of the CPU and 50% of RAM. Nginx, which is
serving the static files, is using very little CPU and maybe 15% of the RAM,
which is the same as when Nginx is idle. It's been on the front page of HN for
about an hour now, and so far as I can tell, it's surviving fine.

------
reemrevnivek
These lights and the story behind them are interesting, but weathering the
flood you'll get if this makes it to the front page is the real story.
<http://www.rascalmicro.com> claims that "The Rascal is powerful enough to
handle real web traffic...", and HN has been known to take down much larger
hardware.

I signed up for the mailing list last year, and I'm still waiting eagerly for
launch! The last blog post on <http://pingswept.org/> and
<https://twitter.com/#!/rascalmicro> both look promising.

~~~
pingswept
(Hi Kevin.)

Thanks for the enthusiasm.

I'm watching the logs stream via tail -f right now, and the Rascal is holding
up OK. The post is near the bottom of the front page now, and it's handling
around 10 hits per second fine. The Rascal is serving both the light control
and all the background pages ("what", "story", "technicals") as well. I'm
actually more worried about the cable connection to my house than the Rascal.
(Eerik put the angerlights in my basement while he moves to California. By the
way, he's looking for a job:
<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=89147645>)

More beta units are on the way-- the hardware beta was successful; software
testing is underway.

I'll write up a post-mortem on the HN traffic and put it on the Rascal blog
(<http://rascalmicro.com/blog/>) in a couple days.

------
newgrad
I want to make the bulbs die remotely.. Can we do it with a script toggling
them on and off in a rapid rate?

~~~
pingswept
You're welcome to try. The problem is that the Rascal fetches a new image from
the webcam after every click. In order to make sure that the bulbs have turned
on (or off) before the image is updated, Eerik added a 1 second delay in the
loop. I think this makes it impossible to toggle the bulbs at more than around
0.5 Hz (1 second on, 1 second off).

If it weren't for the delay, you could hit 300 Hz or so. You could probably
even dim the bulbs with PWM if you wanted.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
To kill a light bulb, it may well be more effective to cycle them at 0.5 than
at 300 Hz, anyway-- you get more thermal cycling, and maybe even some
interesting dynamics from the relay bouncing.

------
reemrevnivek
Started getting some corrupted images partway through, at roughly 1:00.
Possible meltdown?

<http://i.imgur.com/Eme3D.png> <http://i.stack.imgur.com/bID6D.png>
<http://i.stack.imgur.com/ErM6T.png>

(confirmed by myself and another user in the
<http://electronics.stackexchange.com> chat room).

~~~
pingswept
Mysterious. I can't replicate that from here, at least with some idle
clicking.

The traffic has dropped off substantially since earlier today. The Rascal
served around 200,000 hits over the course of around 2 hours on the front
page. I've been logged in remotely the whole time, so there can't have been
any reboots, or my SSH session would have been terminated.

Judging by the process id's of the servers, I don't think any of them have
been restarted.

The error log looks pretty clean. There's huge pile of errors from a misnamed
font file, but that's minor. Other than that, there are just two errors that
look like this:

    
    
      readv() failed (104: Unknown error) while reading upstream, client:
      80.176.154.87, server: localhost, request: "POST /toggleEerik HTTP/1.1",
      upstream: "uwsgi://127.0.0.1:5000", host: "209.6.42.115:82"

------
rauljara
It's a neat project, technically. But...

"If one turned on one's anger light in a fit of frustration, it was useful as
a reminder later in the day to remain angry."

I'm all for finding healthy ways to express anger, but actively holding on to
anger that would have naturally dissipated seems like a great way to transform
yourself into a perpetually bitter person.

------
djeikyb
The site is broken at my 1024 pixel screen width (netbook). About a quarter of
the text exits stage left. It's easier to read the content via view-source.

EDIT: The problem is your 1280px width declaration in style.css's
rascalcontent class. Guessing this will screw up smart phones too.

~~~
pingswept
That's curious-- in my browser, the picture gets cropped, but the text remains
visible. What browser and OS are you using?

EDIT: Thanks for the 1280px info.

~~~
djeikyb
Chrome 12.0.742.124. Arch Linux. Screen cap: <http://i.imgur.com/4vEl3.png>

~~~
pingswept
Ah, you meant the text on the sub-pages-- I thought you meant the links on the
front page.

EDIT: OK, fixed, I think.

~~~
djeikyb
All is readable for me now. Thanks!

------
kleim
It reminds me an episode from Big Bang Theory.

