My dream of a gizmo stuck to the fridge to tell me my next train time, the weather and certain tweets got a step closer today. I ordered an Arduino shield with a 2 line LCD display and some buttons - and a tiny USB-powered wifi adaptor for the Rasperry Pi – the Edimax EW-7811UN Wireless 802.11b/g/n 150Mbps Nano USB Adaptor
I know there are cheaper (and larger) displays to be had, but I like the fact that this one is a shield that plugs straight into the Arduino, so no soldering required. And it has buttons! How cool would it be to press a button for weather, another one for tweets and another for train times?
My mad plan is to get the Raspberry Pi to do all the talking to the internet, and somehow transfer the text to the Arduino, perhaps using PHP like this: http://www.midnightcheese.com/2011/10/displaying-twitter-and-weather-on-your-arduino-lcd-screen/
As a half-way house, I’ll try and get something working on OS X first.