guitarbeard / MitzvahBot

Self lighting menorah for Chanukah. An Arduino/Python project.

MitzvahBot

Self lighting menorah for Chanukah. An Arduino/Python project.

My bot Tweets to @MitzvahBot

MitzvahBot:

1. Determines Chanukah dates and lighting times.
2. Says candle lighting prayers via Twitter.
3. Lights candles on a properly configured Arduino.
4. Extinguishes candles after a few hours.

More Images

To Use:

1. Configure arduino as shown in diagram. Resistors are 330ohm.
2. Load chanukiah.ino to your arduino.
3. Install Python libraries. Use pip on Ubuntu or OSX. Required libraries are pyserial, nap, python-dateutil, and python-twitter.
4. Set appropriate variables in controller.py. You'll need an account on apps.twitter.com.
5. Connect Arduino to host computer via USB. Run controller.py. (Needs to be run as sudo in Ubuntu for serial access to work.)
6. Wait for Chanukah, or enable debug flag in controller.py before running.

Changelog

v1.1 2015-12-06

Some APIs changed since last year; updated code accordingly.

1. Removed Geonames integration. No longer necessary to to enhancements to hebcal.org API.
2. Pull candle lighting times directly from hebcal.org instead of using sunset times.
3. Removed sunset offset setting.