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[Reply #15 on:]

What do you think of that idea?

Not much. I still think that you want someone else to pay for hosting your data. That is the part I can't understand. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

[Reply #16 on:]

I have access to my own hosting equipment; I have a home server for private / low-bandwidth stuff, and I have a server at work which gives me all the hosting goodness I need. I've already experimented with sending data from my arduino project to my server and displaying it within a simple html / php page.

What I'd prefer though, is to just keep using twitter. It does the trick, it's convenient, and I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Personally, I like GizmoJoe's idea. If Neocat's setup (the server side) was open source, I would try and set up a copy of it on my own server. That way I wouldn't be using Neocat's bandwidth. (I don't mind using Twitter's bandwidth, they monetize my tweets with ads and whatever else they stuff into my stream.)

As I mentioned earlier, there was a period of very inconsistent behavior a couple months ago that got me looking into other options. I made a note  back then about a linux based command-line twitter client. I'm pretty sure I could utilize that by just reconfiguring how the Arduino sends its data, and setting something up on one of my servers to accept the data and pipe it into the command-line client.

When Neocat's system started working ok again, I stopped looking into the alternatives but it might be worth persuing that again now.

Cheers!

[Reply #17 on:]

If you're interested setting on your own web app, it appears NeoCat's code for arduino-tweet.appspot.com is on GitHub. I don't understand if the code is open source or not. You could ask @NeoCat on twitter if you could use it. Here's the link:

https://github.com/NeoCat/ArduinoTweetLib-server

Personally, I don't know much about setting up and hosting web apps, but I would consider trying it (with NeoCat's permission, of course). There is still the matter of modifying the Arduino Twitter library to support a server different than arduino-tweet.appspot.com, but I believe that could be done.

[Reply #18 on:]

Arghhh...the app is down again, a victim of over-quota usage. We really do need to consider usage scenarios  for our Arduino testing as long as some are abusing the privilege of the very nice setup NeoCat has created for us. Although it reset last night at midnight PDT (and will again in 27 minutes), it will surely be down once again by tomorrow evening. Scanning several Arduino-Twitter apps, I see that many (including mine) have built-in Twitter throttles to deliberately limit tweets to a reasonable max, either though rate/hr or total number in a given period. It would seem that if we all were willing to do this we might all enjoy the continued use of a great resource. Perhaps NeoCat could even put something in his Google App that could detect over-use and either de-authorize that connection or do some throttling ala Verizon or At&T who face similar issues with bandwidth hogs in their wireless services. Thoughts?

[Reply #19 on:]

I agree with Drew that we need to be respectful of Neocat's web app and limit the amount of tweeting done by our Arduino devices. Also, I like the idea of throttling users that tweet too frequently.

I have two questions:

1. How could we decide on an acceptable number of tweets a device is allowed per a given period of time?

2. Is one anyone and experienced enough programmer to help Neocat setup the throttling that Drew has proposed?

I'm still looking into the idea of creating a clone of the arduino-tweet.appspot site as well. Thanks for your ideas and feedback.

[Reply #20 on:]

Looks like the NeoCat web app is more stable now. I believe the author added some additional limiting code that should help keep the tweet hogs at bay.
BTW, I grabbed the arduino-tweet code from Github and attempted to stand up my own instance on Google AppEngine. Unfortunately, I am missing some critical clue (not a Python expert by any stretch) as I am getting "token not set" errors which seem to indicate that I am not successfully passing the Twitter Access token from Arduino to Google AppEngine, or I am overlooking some permission(s) I need to run the app on that platform. Will keep trying as it would be a good thing to know how to set up and operate such a service.

Drew

[Reply #21 on:]

Success! I was able to successfully stand up an instance ( http://arduino-tweet1.appspot.com/of NeoCat's terrific Twitter proxy on Google AppEngine. If anyone is interested in setting up their own I can help with the process (and help you not repeat the many mistakes I made . BTW, the code, available here https://github.com/NeoCat/ArduinoTweetLib-server , is distributed under GPLv2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html which means you can take, modify and use it according to the normal attribution provisions (and thanks to NeoCat!).

Drew

[Reply #22 on:]

Great job getting a clone of the arduino-tweet web app working! Would you mind detailing the process?