Build Failure Hardware Geekout

So, I built an alarm to notify our team of build failures.

Here's a shot of the internals:

Overhead view

It has an audible alarm and strobe light, is controlled via USB and runs off 12v power. The control software uses the RSS feed from our build server to watch for failures, and sets off the alarm accordingly.

This was a really fun project, and I'm still hunting around for cool electronics to hook up to it (I still have 2 open relays!)

Comments

[Matt]

Ben, the alarm works great, but you should also mention the handy little program you wrote to play a random negative sound when the build breaks and a random positive sound when it's fixed. I think that program in conjunction with the flashing alarm light keep us very aware of breakages and encourage speedy fixes to the build.