Hi all.
Even though I spend a large amount of my time in front of my computer, I don't always have time to watch the bit coin exchange tickers. Additionally, since I'm playing around with Raspberry PI and basically learning the ropes where that and python is concerned, I decided to write bitcoin ticker app that talks, as opposed to displaying current rates.
This app uses festival, and polls the current Bitstamp price (
once, every 61s, to ensure it does not exceed their 600/10m polling rule), as well as computing the BTC value stored in a bitcoin-qt wallet which is running on a separate computer on the network. Notably, I didn't want it jabbering away every time the price changed. As such, it is designed to only speak based upon a user designated variance.
For example, only talk when the price has changed, up or down, by $5.00.
In addition to talking, it will print to a log. Though, in general, outside of debugging, and to keep storage requirements to a minimum, it is better to set the debug flag to 'False'.
And finally, this first pass example is somewhat of a kludge, in that it is my first attempt at writing a python script. So, at this point, it reflects USD only. For example, since I could not figure out how to set up the tokens so that festival would correctly speak dollars, I kludged a string replace. So, if you want it to speak in a different currency, you will need to modify the dollar bit.
With that said, I thought I'd share the code, which I'm releasing on github, under an open source license:
https://github.com/vrhax/BitTalkerFeedback and ideas are always welcomed. And, I'll be happy to answer any questions, should you have them.
