I was in france from Tuesday until last night, so I wasn't able to write a full price breakdown or create visual designs. Whoops!

Project Update: Automated Microblogging

A few weeks ago I proposed a twitter press, and I would still like to continue along that path. I am suggesting a slight change in end goal which would focus more on the tiles and less on the actual press (the press was a gimmick anyway).

What the change means:

• Sensor tiles - Previously all tiles were going to be static values (i.e. letters). Now I would like to include dynamic tiles (i.e temperatures, light values, etc).
• Alternate triggers - Previously the only trigger to send the tweet was "printing" a page by using the press. I would like to make the trigger itself be a tile.
• Fewer tile spaces - 140 tiles and spaces was an arbitrary and large number for a proof of concept. I would like to lower that number to more like 15 or 20.

I am hoping that the added functionality makes up for the fact that I don't plan to build a physical printing press.

Money

I expect that each tile will use about $3 in parts each, while the larger reciever will cost about $5. I would love to incorporate wireless functonality on the chip if it is in the budget, which would cost about $25.

Timeline

I would like to make the case and the basic "tile network" design done for composities and networking weeks respectively (i.e. this week). This will give me the ability to fine tune the project during the last week.