Biticker - Currency converter for Chrome with Desktop Notifications

[Tritonio]

I've made a Chrome extension that combines a price ticker for any currency combination (BTC/USD, BTC/EUR, LTC/BTC, EUR/USD etc), a price graph, desktop notifications (with option sound effects) for when the price exceeds user specified limits and most importantly a currency converter for the following currencies:

BTC Bitcoin average
BTC Bitcoin average
GOX Bitcoin Mt.Gox
BTS Bitcoin Bitstamp
BCE Bitcoin BTC-E
CBS Bitcoin Coinbase      
LTC Litecoin      
NMC Namecoin   
PPC PPCoin   
IXC Ixcoin   
TRC Terracoin
DVC Devcoin
XRP Ripples   
MNC MinCoin   
SLL Linden dollar (Second Life)
USD USA dollar      
EUR Euro      
RUB Russian ruble      
CAD Canadian dollar      
GBP Pound sterling      
AUD Australian dollar      
PLN Polish zloty      
UAH Ukrainian hryvnia      
CNY Chinese Renminbi      
SEK Swedish krona      
CZK Czech koruna      
BRL Brazilian real      
CHF Swiss franc      
NOK Norwegian krone      
ARS Argentine peso      
DKK Danish krone      
RON Romanian leu      
ILS Israeli new shekel      
BGN Bulgarian lev      
NZD New Zealand dollar      
JPY Japanese yen      
MXN Mexican peso      
INR Indian rupee      
HKD Hong Kong dollar   
HUF Hungarian Forint   
XAG Silver troy ounce      
XAU Gold troy ounce      
XPT Platinum troy ounce      
XPD Paladium troy ounce      
GAG Silver gram      
GAU Gold gram (also Pecunix)      
GPT Platinum gram      
GPD Paladium gram

Don't forget to go to the options page, either click the "tools" icon on the top left corner of the converter, or tight click on Biticker's icon and then click Options.

Download from Chrome Web Store

reddit post

I hope you people like it. :-) And if you want me to add more currencies post here or contact me.

[GoWest]

Well done.  Been waiting a long time for a good Bitcoin extension for Chrome.

[Tritonio]

Thanks GoWest!

I also did just remove the Mt Gox permissions because a redditor was scared away from it and I now mirror the Mt Gox ticker myself on bittit.

[Garr255]

Sweet. Works well, thanks

[Clipse]

Would be nice to be able to customze the graph options ie. manage it with similar options available on bitcoincharts but with easier access right from the button in chrome extensions.

[Tritonio]

I'll put an option page. It will allow you to change the graph as you said as well as deactivate currencies you don't need.

[Tritonio]

Done. I added more currencies and there is an option page which lets you deselect unneeded currencies, pick the currency that will be displayed in the ticker and also customize the URL of the graph. :-D I've also refactored the code and it's trivial to add more currencies. I'll probably let users pick their own currencies by code in a later version. We'll see...

[Tritonio]

Added INR (Indian rupee). Please suggest more currencies to add if I am missing yours.

Openexchangerates is unfortunatelly no longer "open", it became a paid service. I switched to another source (that I host on my own).

Oh I also enbled a new feature in Chrome Market and you can leave feedback or ask questions from the extension's page directly. (there is "give feedback" link or something like that)

[Tritonio]

Added:

XAU: Gold ounce      
XAG: Silver ounce      
XPT: Platinum ounce      
XPD: Palladium ounce

Now it must be the only converter that supports bitcoins, second life dollars and precious metals. ;-)

[videos4btc]

Added:

XAU: Gold ounce      
XAG: Silver ounce      
XPT: Platinum ounce      
XPD: Palladium ounce

Now it must be the only converter that supports bitcoins, second life dollars and precious metals. ;-)

Thanks for the service I use it all the time!

[Tritonio]

Added Namecoin and Litecoin. Also centralized and mirrored all the currency data on my servers so that permissions asked are even fewer and all exchange rates can now be fetched in a single request. I also mirror the two default graphs on my server to avoid straining bitcoincharts since the Biticker's userbase is growing.

Next version will properly utilize the new Chrome API so that the whole thing might use less RAM and CPU (although neither has ever been in issue IMO). In other words I will remove the background page of the extension and replace it with alarms or what you have (I don't remember how Chrome calls them).

Are there any other weird/virtual/crypto currencies that you would like to be added? Or normal currencies of course.

EDIT: 1.6.0 is out which adds color codes to currencies and a few more currencies.

[Tritonio]

It now remembers the last value your wrote and whenever you reopen the converter window it will be loaded at the proper place and all conversions will be updated. So for example you might want to input "1" into XAU (Gold ounces) to see the current gold price immediatelly whenever you open the window.

Also as I said in my previous edit, currencies are color coded. Yellow for precious metals, green for fiat, blue for cryptocurrencies and light green for linden dollars which is fiat but maybe even worse. ;-)

[Tritonio]

1.8.1 is out.

Changes:

Desktop notifications for when the BTC prices exceeds some user defined limits.
Now the current Bitcoin price is used instead of the average because the average looks like it is lagging (it is not). You can still select to use the average from the options page.
Revamped the options page a bit.
Server messages will pop up announcing new features, problems or whatever. You can turn those off from the options page.
Changed the tooltip of the Biticker button to show BOTH average and current rate.
Put a big icon that opens the option page on the top left corner of the currency converter in case someone doesn't know how to open option pages in Chrome.
Fixed SLL rate.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback!

[Vernon715]

You should use the average price from multiple exchanges, not just mt. Gox.

[Tritonio]

You should use the average price from multiple exchanges, not just mt. Gox.

I'll make it so that the average price takes Bitstamp into account too. The current price will still be coming from Mt Gox though since that's the one that changes the fastest.

[Vernon715]

You should use the average price from multiple exchanges, not just mt. Gox.

I'll make it so that the average price takes Bitstamp into account too. The current price will still be coming from Mt Gox though since that's the one that changes the fastest.

Sounds great.

[bbit]

Thank you for making this! 

[Tritonio]

You should use the average price from multiple exchanges, not just mt. Gox.

I'll make it so that the average price takes Bitstamp into account too. The current price will still be coming from Mt Gox though since that's the one that changes the fastest.

Sounds great.

It's done, in cased you missed the server notification.

And in case anyone is interested in the details here is how I calculate the average currently:

This runs every minute: (but doesn't necessarily query Bitstamp and MtGox every minute)

BitstampAverage=BitstampAverage*0.9872+CurrentBitstamp*(1-0.9872)
BitcoinAverage=0.6*MtGoxAverage+0.4*BitstampAverage

(MtGoxAverage is taken from https://mtgox.com/code/ticker.php which is API v0 so it's not the same as the one shown on their main page)
0.9872 is chosen so that BitstampAverage is 99% affected by the prices in the last ~6 hours, 90% affected by Bitstamp prices in the last ~3 hours and 50% by the last ~54 minutes.
I wish I knew what kind of average is the Mt Gox average in API v0 so that I could use the same for Bitstamp...

[Tritonio]

Question: When price exceeds the limits and a desktop notification is shown should I change the limits? Specifically:

1. If you set a high limit at 31 and the current price climbs to 31.2, should I increase the high price to 31.2?
2. Should I leave the limits as they are but instead never show a new notification unless the price first falls back in the limits?
3. Maybe it would make sense to widen the limits to include the *average* ONLY if the average also goes off limits? (I think this would be confusing for the users that don't know this detail though so I'd rather avoid this solution)

Currently it will just keep poping up the notification every 5 minutes as long as you don't change the limits manually.

[Vernon715]

Question: When price exceeds the limits and a desktop notification is shown should I change the limits? Specifically:

1. If you set a high limit at 31 and the current price climbs to 31.2, should I increase the high price to 31.2?
2. Should I leave the limits as they are but instead never show a new notification unless the price first falls back in the limits?
3. Maybe it would make sense to widen the limits to include the *average* ONLY if the average also goes off limits? (I think this would be confusing for the users that don't know this detail though so I'd rather avoid this solution)

Currently it will just keep poping up the notification every 5 minutes as long as you don't change the limits manually.

I vote for 2. it is the most logical.