Raspberry Pi makes for a great notification platforms as it can be easily integrated with many APIs. Maker and developer Dr David Pride saw a glowing opportunity and seized the chance to make this clever Twitter-based project he dubbed “Bye-Bye Bird”. This project keeps him up to date on when his friends are leaving the social media platform with a tearful notification system.
Dr Pride laser cut a board to resemble Twitter’s bird logo. Behind this bird is a Raspberry Pi that listens for Tweets using the #RIPTwitter hashtag. If it detects a tweet using this farewell hashtag, it triggers a system that causes the bird to release a single tear using a syringe of water.
@Raspberry_Pi All my friends are leaving and this makes me sad. So I made Bye-Bye Bird. Connected to the Twitter API, it sheds a single tear when someone uses the #RIPTwitter hashtag. pic.twitter.com/1JnQBpKIhqNovember 21, 2022
Over at Twitter (ironically), Dr Pride shared a demo video of the project in action. In the video, he not only shows a hilarious sobbing Twitter logo but also an inside look at its construction. It doesn’t take too much hardware to recreate but it definitely takes plenty of ingenuity to put the idea together in the first place.
Dr Pride is using a Raspberry Pi 4 but you could easily swap this out for a Pi 3 ,Pi Zero or even a Raspberry Pi Pico W if that’s all you have on hand. When the Pi detects the predetermined hashtag, it sends a command to a servo motor that’s attached to a syringe of water. The servo will move just enough to push a tear's worth of water out of the eye.
The Raspberry Pi is able to check for tweets by interfacing with the Twitter API. This is made available for developers to experiment with which makes it a great tool for Dr Pride’s Bye-Bye Bird project. This API can be useful for even smaller boards—we even have a guide on how to use the Pico W with Twitter via IFTTT.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi Project or maybe even make your own crying Twitter logo, check out the official post shared by Dr David Pride over at Twitter.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
