Facebook Flagger—Notifications over Bluetooth LE using the Light Blue Bean

Cut out your flag from a sturdy material like foam core or cardboard.

Print out whatever icon you would like. Our graphics for the icons and dials used are available here. Or get creative and print or draw your own!

Glue the icon onto your card-stock or foam core base. You can either use rubber cement or superglue to glue the flag onto the servo arm that comes with your servo.

Currently you must run OS X 10.9 Mavericks to program the Bean. We will be releasing other platforms soon and you can track our progress here.

Install the Bean Software by following these directions.

All of the code is available on github.

Open the Sketch and hit Build. If you have LightBlue Bean selected it will open the Bean Loader Application.

Connect to your Bean using the Loader App, and program the sketch.

We will use a virtual serial port to send the Facebook / Twitter notifications. Right Click on the Bean and select 'Use for Virtual Serial'.

We will use Python (an easy scripting language) to pull email notifications using the gmail module, check if the sender is Facebook or Twitter, and then send them using the pyserial module.

If you haven't already, download the code, available on github. and install the gmail and pyserial modules. This is easily done by running pip install requirements.txt in the root directory of the repo.

I recommend creating a new Gmail account to receive notifications. This prevents you from needing to store your password credentials to your main account in your Python code.

Set up Facebook and Twitter to send email notifications to your new email address. If you like, you can forward them back to your main account as well.

Run the Python code in terminal by browsing to the directory and typing python Bean_Notification.py

You can use Sugru or Thermoplastic to form a nice holder for your servo. It should hold the servo so it can be mounted securely to your monitor, or wherever you want to place it.

You may have to do a bit of calibration to get your Flag to sit straight up after a notification. If you send an email to your account with the subject "test", the flag will go to it's upright position. If that doesn't suit your set up, you can pop off the servo arm, and remount it any angle you wish. Alternatively, you can edit FACEBOOK_SERVO_NOTIFY_POSITION in the Arduino sketch to whatever value you want.

Alright, you're all set! Go post this project on your Facebook page, or Tweet it, and wait for the comments to roll in. When you get a notification email, your Flag will pop up. When you want to clear the notification, just push the flag back down.

Like the Punch Through facebook page and trigger a flag in our office!

The Arduino sketch disables the servo after moving it into position, so you won't hear any annoying buzzing sounds.

Ready for more? We have some ideas on how to extend the project. Create a San Francisco summer weather indicator! We have one image listed to get you started. Icon credit.

Or, add another servo to track Facebook and Twitter notifications. You could track other things like sports scores, page visits, or earthquake activity!