IoT Dot Matrix Display: Twitter Mentions Using ESP8266 Adafruit.io and IFTTT
February 17, 20173 min read
📺 Watch the Video View on YouTube --- Let’s say that you don’t have your smartphone around and someone mentions you on twitter. Wouldn’t it be nice t...
Let’s say that you don’t have your smartphone around and someone mentions you on twitter. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a display that automatically reads your twitter mentions and show it on a scrolling display? So let’s build a internet controlled (IoT) dot-matrix display that does this for us using an ESP8266.
The plan to accomplish this is as follows:
•Someone mentions us on twitter (in my case @debsahu)
•IF This Then That (IFTTT) tracks these mentions and posts this data on Adafruit.io (MQTT Broker)
•An ESP8266 connects to Adafruit.io and shows this data on a Dot-Matrix display
We can’t control who mentions us on twitter, so we move to the second step in our plan to configure IFTTT and Adafruit.io.
To setup a data feed (MQTT topic) on Adafruit.io,
•Goto “feed” and “Create New Feed”
•Provide a unique name for the feed like “twitter-calls”, this means the MQTT topic that we need to subscribe to is “feed/twitter-calls”
To setup IFTTT to connect to twitter and Adafruit.io,
•Connect your twitter and Adafruit.io account to IFTTT by logging in and giving proper permissions
•Create a new applet
•For “this“: Select “twitter” and “New mention of you”
•For “that“: Select “Adafruit” and “Send data to Adafruit.io”. Remember to select the correct topic created above and a message template using ingredients that suits your need.
As a part of the third step in our plan, we need to subscribe to our MQTT topic and display this data on a Dot-Matrix display.