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---
categories:
- embedded
date: 2015-10-29
title: Internet is magic - Glowing ponies show your friends' online status
aliases:
- /2015/10/29/internet-is-magic.html
---
Friendship is magic! I like the My Little Pony series, and two of my best friends, knowing that, surprised me with self-made versions of Twilight and Fluttershy at my birthday.
_Aren't they adorable?_
As you can see in the picture, I grabbed some diffused LEDs and illuminated my ponies.
That was kind of unexciting after a while. Luckily, I had an [ESP8266](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266) to spare. These modules are small Arduino compatible WiFi modules, so with some programming knowledge you can control GPIOs via WiFi.
Awesome! Let's connect the ponies to the world wide web.
_Not much to see here_
I wrote a quick-and-dirty Arduino sketch, [uploaded it]({% post_url 2015-10-14-esp8266%}) and was able to control the LEDs via netcat. You can find the sketch [here](https://git.schneefux.xyz/?p=internet-is-magic;a=blob;f=luminate.ino;hb=HEAD).
_The cables in the background supply power._
And now comes the fun part. Both of my friends chat with me via [Telegram](https://telegram.org). Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram has an open API that allows me to easily receive their online status.
I installed the [telegram-cli](https://github.com/vysheng/tg) client on my [Raspberry Pi](https://raspberrypi.org), a cheap and small computer, and set up an autostart script. telegram-cli runs in bot mode, a python script updates the LEDs every minute. I uploaded the script [here](https://git.schneefux.xyz/?p=internet-is-magic;a=blob;f=client.py;hb=HEAD).
So whenever my friends are online, their corresponding pony starts to glow.
_When they light up at night, you can feel the magic._
If you want to build something similar to this, be sure to ask your friends whether it's okay for them that you monitor their presence all day long.
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