Shortcuts: circuit diagram and Perl driver code and my slides from a talk I gave on the project for the Toronto Perl Mongers and an MP3 of the talk audio (Thanks Fulko!)

As resident geek here at RFP I have to monitor a bunch of network services that keep the audio feeds, website, mail and such rolling along for everyone to enjoy. Constantly checking the computer in my office was getting to be annoying. I decided I needed a way to see that everything was ok without having to get off the couch during my downtime so I built this little doodad to do the trick. It plugs into the printer port on the back of the server - I wasn't using that port for anything anyhow.

Total cost of parts? about $2.50 (not including LED's or case). I whipped up this driver code with Perl (works on both Win32 and Linux - possibly other Unix variants?) to monitor the broadcast streaming servers, web servers and a few other network services we use here at RFP. With a butchered ethernet cable, some scraps of wire, a bit of solder and some squinting and we now have a handy blinkenlites panel!

Want the schematic diagram to see how it all goes together?

You got it!. It's very easy - go build yourself one.

It even has a cool blue light that goes on when someone is listening to the audio feeds. Now, every time you listen to the station, a little blue light comes on in my apartment. How cool is that? Darn cool. That's how cool.

The circuit is really easy - just wire up a 1k resistor to each of the data pins you want to use, stick a wire on one of the grounded pins (18->25) and you're off to the races.