RSS Newsfeed Reader

This app reads RSS files and converts the headlines into messages that display on a Betabrite LED sign.

Requirements

• BBXML
• xsltproc
• Perl, with modules: XML::LibXML, XML::LibXSLT, LWP::UserAgent

Setup

First, you need to allocate the TEXT files on the sign to accommodate the headlines that you want to display. See the User's Guide for details. Configure one TEXT file label for each RSS file that you want to display. Example:

<alphasign>
  <memoryConfig>
    <textConfig label="a" size="1024"/>
  </memoryConfig>
</alphasign>

Running It

The script is bbnewsfetch. It takes two arguments:

1. The URL of the RSS file.
2. The label of the TEXT file to use.

In addition to the two required arguments, you can supply the color to use on the sign. The valid color names are documented in the BBXML User's Guide.

The output is the BBXML document.

<alphasign>
  <text label="a">
    <mode display="compressedRotate"/><green/>
    <msg>Slashdot: </msg>
    <msg>What Ever Happened to Virtual Reality? - - - </msg>
    <msg>U.S. Rejects Canadian Rejection of DMCA - - - </msg>
    <msg>The Chimera Dilemma Manifested in Sheep - - - </msg>
    <msg>Does launchd Beat cron? - - - </msg>
    <msg>Pi: Less Random Than We Thought - - - </msg>
    <msg>Firefox 1.1 Plans Native SVG Support - - - </msg>
    <msg>Trek Producers Will Provide World A Break - - - </msg>
    <msg>Serenity Screenings Sell Out - - - </msg>
    <msg>Copy-and-Paste Reveals Classified U.S. Documents - - - </msg>
    <msg>A Look at Silicon Valley Cafeterias</msg>
  </text>
</alphasign>

Send the output to the sign with bbxml:

How It Works

The bbnewsfetch script downloads the RSS file that you specify and then processes it with XSLT using the rss_alphasign.xsl stylesheet. The output of this is a BBXML document, which you can then send to the Betabrite sign using the bbxml script. The following manual steps accomplish the same thing.