July 26, 2012

Enable Arduino tweeting without an Ethernet shield

 Although this may sound like an antithesis to our goals, it is possible to have an Arduino board send tweets without directly-connected Ethernet hardware. To do so, Ian Foulds developed a method using a USB-connected Arduino and a PC. The computer runs python scripts that listen for text from the Arduino, and another is python-twitter which sends the text to the twitter service. The main reasons for using this method would be to reduce the Arduino-related hardware size as much as possible; or if you don't have a wired internet connection - as the Arduino board makes use of the host computer's wifi connection. 


Finally, for most users there's no extra cost - so give it a whirl, follow Ian's instructions and get yourself a twitter account. Then you can also follow us on twitter and Google+ for news and product updates as well. 

If you're looking for the smallest piece of Arduino-compatible hardware to use as part of an automated tweeting machine, consider our Freetronics LeoStick. Apart from being one of the smallest Arduino-compatibles on the market with USB, it also has an onboard RGB LED and piezo for sound and knock detection:



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