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Flashing Sign

This is an entry to Static Showdown 2014 Hackathon.

Flashing Sign is an Attention Seeker. Everyone will notice it.

Rough Sketch Plan

Background

One year ago, my university accepted new freshmen to the Computer Engineering department.

We decided to go to meet and welcome new Computer Engineering students on the orientation day. We waited outside the meeting hall building, waiting for the orientation to finish.

There, I also see students from other faculties/departments waiting to meet the freshmen as well.

Inside the meeting hall was several thousand students, and when everyone come out, the Computer Engineering students might not even notice us waiting for them.

So, with my MacBook with me, I quickly coded an HTML page with a big flashing text and put the browser on fullscreen.

It flashed between black and white violently and it quickly get the attention of Computer Engineering students. All that was done in about 5 minutes.

I quickly written it out of hurry, and I did not keep that original file (I put it in /tmp, so it's long gone now).


Several times later throughout last year, I had some moments where I think it would be nice if I had a flashing sign, ready to use (I'm getting lazy to code it over again).

So, this project is an iteration of that idea.

The goal is to create a full-featured flashing sign.

This is what I have in plan, and I don't know whether I'll be able to finish all of them:

  • Can work on Laptops (big screens!) and on tablets (will be test on an iPad).
  • Can work offline.
  • When online, can be remotely controlled (for example, putting on a score sign in a live sport game).
  • Flashing can be turned on and off, speed of flashing can be customized.
  • Color and font can be customized.
  • In addition to displaying text, should be able to display the time (clock, stopwatch, timer).