HOW TO – Make a physical email notifier

Arduino Technology

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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February 15th, 2008 10

A glowing plastic cube that lights up when you have mail in your Gmail inbox, via a Boarduino MCU:

The following guide is deliberately fairly high-level, because the exact details will vary depending on your operating system and particular hardware setup. I did this with my Mac, but hopefully there’ll be enough information here for you make it work on your system, perhaps with a little Googling.

If you don’t happen to have a glowing cube lying around, you can modify this to work with almost any output device you could think of, from a simple LED, or a buzzer, to something far more clever like moving a servo (Gmail Notifier Robot, anyone?)

How to make a Physical Gmail Notifier – Link

10 thoughts on “HOW TO – Make a physical email notifier”

Joe says:

February 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

opps… now the link is there…
doh
Gareth Branwyn says:

February 15th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Thanks for folks quickly pointing out the missing link. Fixed.
John says:

February 20th, 2008 at 4:00 am

I want to BUY something like this. I’ve been looking for years, anyone know of anything out there? Any links would be appreciated.
hell yeah says:

February 20th, 2008 at 5:19 am

that’s fucking cool!
abdulahi says:

February 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm

is it true that clearence is fat