Old Laptop Wall Decoration

Posted 12-18-2010 at 12:18 AM by leehanken

Photo

Aim was to recycle an old Windows 98 Toshiba laptop to do something useful or fun.

- Using an installation of Slackware 13.0 and a wireless dongle.

- Script to display email inbox, facebook stream and a number of rss feeds, onto the console.

- Alternatively to play a slideshow of photos.

- Choose a radio station and play in the background, depending on the time of day.

How this was achieved:-

- To make the script start automatically:

In /etc/initab

Code:

# These are the standard console login getties in multiuser mode:
c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/sbin/autologin 38400 tty1 linux
c2:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/sbin/autologin 38400 tty2 linux
c3:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/sbin/autologin 38400 tty3 linux

autologin.c

Code:

int main()
{
	execlp ( "login","login","-f","user",0);
}

- To get email

Code:

/usr/sbin/anacron -s -n

/usr/bin/fetchmail -f /root/.fetchmailrc -k -d 300

/etc/anacrontab

Code:

SHELL=/usr/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
RANDOM_DELAY=0
START_HOURS_RANGE=0-24
1	0	clearmail	/usr/bin/cat /dev/null > /var/mail/root

.fetchmailrc

Code:

set daemon 300
poll imap.isp.com with proto IMAP
       user 'user@domain.com' there with password 'mypassword' is 'root' 
here

- To get and display rss feeds in python

Code:

import feedparser
feeds = ("http://feeds1.server.com/rss.xml","http://feed2.server.com/rss.xml")
c = 0
for feed in feeds:
	d = feedparser.parse(feed)
	for value in d.entries:
		str = value['summary_detail']['value']
		str = str.encode('ascii', 'replace')
		if (c == 0):
			print "\033[31m";
		else:
			print "\033[35m";
		print str
		c = (c + 1) % 2
print "\033[37m"

- To pipe output to console one line at a time, in C

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

main()
{
	char buffer[80];
	char *ok;

	while (!feof(stdin)) {
		ok=fgets(buffer,80,stdin);
		if (ok != 0)
			printf("%s",buffer);
		system("/usr/bin/sleep 1");
	}

}

- Shell script to do all of the above

/usr/bin/go

Code:

setterm -blank 0
while true;
do 
	/usr/bin/mail -u root -H > /root/item1.txt
	/usr/bin/python /root/my/my.py > /root/item2.txt
	/usr/bin/fbcmd stream > /root/item3.txt
	/usr/bin/slowoutput < /root/item1.txt
	/usr/bin/slowoutput < /root/item2.txt
	/usr/bin/slowoutput < /root/item3.txt
done

- Startup script to decide what to do based on time

Code:

HOUR="`/usr/bin/date +\"%H\"`";
if [ "`/usr/bin/tty`" = '/dev/tty1' ];
  then
    if [[ $HOUR -lt 7 ]];
	then
	  /usr/bin/playradio1 &
    elif [[ $HOUR -gt 6  && $HOUR -lt 12 ]];
	then
	  /usr/bin/playradio2 &
    elif [[ $HOUR -gt 11  &&  $HOUR -lt 14 ]];
	then
	  /usr/bin/playradio3 &
    elif [[ $HOUR -gt 13  &&  $HOUR -lt 20 ]];
	then
	  /usr/bin/playradio4 &
    elif [[ $HOUR -gt 19 ]];
	then
	  /usr/bin/playradio5 &
    fi
elif [ "`/usr/bin/tty`" = '/dev/tty2' ];
    then
         if [[ $HOUR -lt 19 && $HOUR -gt 2 ]];
              then
                chvt 2
   		/usr/bin/go
         fi
elif [ "`/usr/bin/tty`" = '/dev/tty3' ];
    then
         if [[ $HOUR -gt 18 || $HOUR -lt 3 ]];
             then
    	         chvt 3
    	         /usr/bin/mplayer -fs -vo fbdev -loop 0 /root/slides.avi
         fi
fi

/usr/bin/playradio1

Code:

mplayer -playlist http://music.someradioserver.com/Show.asx?StreamID=10

Old Laptop Wall Decoration

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