I’ve written before about how wonderful Twitter can be as a messaging bus for physical objects. The idea of overhearing machines talking about what they’re doing is, to my mind, quite delightful.
So when I found an untapped data source for such an object, I thought it was worth having a poke. Half an hour of scripting later and Tower Bridge was on Twitter. It tells you when it’s opening and closing, what vessel is passing through, and which way that vessel is going. The times are determined by taking the scheduled time for the “lift” and subtracting five minutes for the opening, and adding five minutes for closing - the official site suggests that, at rush hour, lifts should take five minutes to open and close tops.
That’s it, really; it’s just a simple case of scraping some data and outputting it. It’s not a hugely frequent event, so won’t disturb you very much; if anything, it’s just a little insight into the heartbeat of the Thames.
As a note on its design: it’s very important to me that the bridge should talk in the first person. Whilst I’m just processing publicly available data on its behalf, Twitter is a public medium for individuals; I felt it only right that if I was going to make an object blog, the object should express something of a personality, even if it’s wrapped up in an inanimate object describing itself as “I”.
And, if you want proof that it works… how about this:
I’d set the server up yesterday; suddenly, this morning, it twittered into life, and we charged out of the office around the corner to the bridge, where the MV Dixie Queen was getting into position for its lift. As it went through, I took a picture. That was a very satisfying moment.
(Thanks to Tom for helping me bash a crontab and a few other server-shaped things into shape. If you’re interested in the technology, which is really not very relevant, it’s about thirty lines of Ruby that glues together a combination of: wget, Hpricot, John Nunemaker’s Twitter gem, and cron.)
Um, not sure about the first person aspect–Your bridge sounds extremely SLUTTY!
“I am opening for the SB Will, which is passing upstream.”
” I am closing after the MV Dixie Queen has passed Upstream.”
” I am opening for the MV Dixie Queen, which is passing Upstream”
Rrrr. Talk dirty to me, my ‘Wonder Bridge’! Tell me about all those boats and what they do to you…
[…] Infovore: I’ve written before about how wonderful Twitter can be as a messaging bus for physical objects. […]
It would be better if it could sense when there was the most amount of tourists on it, and then open in reverse, dumping them all in the Thames. Can you do this on your computer machine for all of us?
[…] Infovore » Making bridges talk Mr. Armitage creates an “idea-space representation” of the London Tower Bridge using some screen scraping and Twitter… A sign of things to come? When will I be following my house on Twitter? (tags: twitter blogjects london towerbridge physical bridges conversations microblogging) […]
[…] Making Bridges Talk is just ingenious! Scrape some data that’s publically available, mash it up, and pass it to Twitter. Before you know it the Tower Bridge is on Twitter! Spread the word! […]
[…] Infovore: Making bridges talk […]
[…] Infovore » Making bridges talk I’ve written before about how wonderful Twitter can be as a messaging bus for physical objects. The idea of overhearing machines talking about what they’re doing is, to my mind, quite delightful. So when I found an untapped data source for such an obj (tags: twitter london API) This entry was written by delicious and posted on at 3:36 am and filed under delicious. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Check out Avianflu on Twitter…similar idea but it is making a virus talk.
[…] Infovore » Making bridges talk Tom Armitage’s quick example of how data about "real world" objects can be transmitted through twitter (tags: bridges physicalobjects twitter) […]
[…] Making bridges talk (a practical approach to using a simple social network platform like Twitter to let things talk) […]
[…] inspired by this (london bridge twitters when it opens, and includes the name of the boat) I thought it would be […]
How about adding a nice view of Tower Bridge as a background image?
[…] with Alf in the comments about blogging (or Twittering) machines. Alf pointed out a really quite cool example. This is something that we are close to implementing in the open in the lab at RAL. We hope to have […]
[…] why I enjoy @towerbridge so much - less the concept of machines talking, but more a simple reminder of the disrupted moments in everyday city […]
In order to provide additional information about the bridges movements we could look to the oil industry and their use of SCARDA devices. The device produces updates on things such as oil flow rates…interesting to see consumer message buses tart to converge with enterprise buses.