DIY Theater: Signalling
Remember the continuous build thingy? Friday it jumped to a new level. Co-worker Jess was kind enough to wire a parallel port connector to a little LED cluster with some resistors. The LED cluster conveniently had red, yellow, green and amber lights. He wired them to the first four data pins on the parallel port, and I found a perl library to let me set the pins individually. I wrote a script that parses the status file spit out by the build tool to determine which of the LEDs should be lit. The result: a proof-of-concept continuous build signal. It was a moment of geeky ecstasy to see it working. Today I dragged my boss in to look at it. He pronounced it cool. We ordered parts for a snazzier version today, including bigger lights and a plastic housing. Next I want to tweak the software to make the red light blink. Oh! I guess that means I'll be writing my first multithreaded perl program! Wheeee!