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.)
Updated June 22nd 2011 with the new URL for the bot, following this whole series of events.
hilary | 28 Feb 2008
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…
Jim | 28 Feb 2008
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?
chantelle | 2 Mar 2008
Check out Avianflu on Twitter…similar idea but it is making a virus talk.
Moof | 6 Mar 2008
How about adding a nice view of Tower Bridge as a background image?
Chris Sparshott | 25 Mar 2008
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.
Simon | 1 Jul 2008
Mars Phoenix has a Twitter feed
Now so does Mars
http://twitter.com/mars_
MJC | 20 Jul 2008
Been following for a few months – perfect use of Twitter. Great idea Tom
A Ateeque | 9 Nov 2010
Great idea…I did something similar at Uni for my final project. Wonder what your data source is? How do you find out when the bridge is about to open?
Also, any chance of making the code available? Interesting in seeing how Ruby is used for this purpose.
Cheers
sam | 12 Jun 2011
Really disappointed that this fun and informative account has been ripped away. Grrrr!
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