A weird thing happened a few days ago. The JKI State Machine went viral.
If you follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friend, you would've known right away about the LabVIEW-, LEGO Mindstorms-, and Twitter-powered popcorn-popping contraption a friend and I built recently. We built it to enter a contest, where the object was to make a video showing the "most inventive way to pop this all-American snack."
Our first idea was a winner: Crowd-sourced Popcorn.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsE6tkWCzM
Since we uploaded it last week, the video has gone viral. It was picked up first by Engadget, but things got really big when it hit Mashable. Even now, there's a steady stream of #popcorn tweets on Twitter, as people send the link around and around to their friends. Most importantly, we won the contest.
What does this have to do with JKI?
If you watch the video, you can clearly see that the famous JKI State Machine plays a starring role. I got to thinking, though, that the JKI State Machine is by no means the only important piece of the puzzle. I used a whole bunch of JKI products!
- I used the JKI State Machine as a template for the whole application.
- I used JKI's VI Package Manager to install the required OpenG libraries and EasyXML.
- I used JKI's EasyXML to parse the results returned from the Twitter Search API.
- I used the JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW to easily sync the code to my Subversion server.
We didn't spend a lot of time designing and building the Popcorn Tweets system. After all, I have a real job at JKI. But luckily, I live in a world where NI makes great products like LabVIEW, and where NI partners like JKI can extend the platform and provide great tools to help people turn any idea into reality!
Want More Technical Info?
I've posted a technical overview of the system on NI's LabVIEW DIY Crew group. Check it out!
