timd / marketbear

Market Bear
http://github.com/timd/marketbear

Author: Tim Duckett
Email : tim@adoptioncurve.net
Web   : http://www.adoptioncurve.net

REQUIREMENTS
============

Ruby 1.8 (not tested with 1.9 yet)
Arduino & Ethernet shield

BACKGROUND
==========

This project takes a feed from a web-based data source, and controls
the colour of the panda's eyes.  The background can be found at
http://www.adoptioncurve.net/archives/2009/03/toy-abuse-for-fun-and-nonprofit.php

Ruby components based on code by James Smith (www.floppy.co.uk)
Arduino components based on code by Bob S (http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1231812230)

USAGE
=====

To use the software, firstly copy config/config_example.yml to config/config.yml.


DATA
====

Applicaiton state is saved into data/state.yml.  The latest market value from the
datafile is stored, and used to calculate the change in the market price on each run.
The colour for the bear's eye change is set according to:

State        Eye colour    RED value  GREEN value
-----        ----------    ---------  -----------
Market up      Green      0      255
Market same      Yellow      255      255
Market down      Red        255      0

Application state is saved into data/state.yml. The latest year and month from
the datafile is stored, and checked against the datafile on each run. If the 
latest date has not changed, updates are not sent out.