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 If you are tied to your cell phone to monitor weather, calendar events and stocks, the Alert Tube could be the next gadget you need. Michael Watson built is around a Raspberry Pi, it monitors the net for events that you choose and alerts you by light patterns, text to speech or sounds. You can see the entire project build details here.
“The Alert Tube is an open source information appliance that connects wirelessly to the Internet of Things in the cloud. The user interface is dead simple, it communicates data via customized colored light sequences, sounds and text to speech.
The idea for the Alert Tube came from something simple, a clock. You don’t have to turn it on, or boot it up and request information, it simply tells you the time, all the time, without you having to ask. That’s the idea behind the Alert Tube. You tell it what you want and then it continuously displays and/or emits audible information, without you having to ask. Simply walk by and take a glance at it or listen for any important alerts. Set it and forget it!”