Lava Lamp

Cruisecontrol Build Results With Lava Lamps

Intro

One important point in getting feedback on the quality and status of an IT project is to know if the build compiles and all the unit tests run. One popular way to do this in the Java world is to use Cruisecontrol for continuous integration.

Now, building everything is nice. Still then, developers want (should want...) to get feedback about the build status. Calling a webpage, getting email or Jabber messages, … whatever fits. But how about "real life" information, not just bits and bytes? The approach described in the (good!) book Pragmatic Automation is to use lava lamps as visual feedback of the build status (see Bubble Bubble, Build's In Trouble).

That's a nice compilation to implement the lava lamp feedback system using X10 home automation products. As X10 is not popular in Europe, here's another, simple description how to set this up.

Build Status Using Leunig Power Switch

Leunig offers web-controlled power supplys (mostly industrial parts). And: they offer a web-controlled connector strip. That's a connector strip with an additional "input": An ethernet port to access a built-in webserver that offers a nice webinterface to control the power connectors. Isn't that about what we need?

From now on the project plan is simple

1. Take web controlled connector strip
2. Connect two lava lamps
3. Write cruisecontrol publisher to switch the correct connectors on and off

First: Web controlled power strip, e.g. ePowerSwitch-4 (that's a bit expensive but we didn't find anything cheaper… maybe building this for a 10th of the price would be another nice project...)

Second: Two lava lamps. You will find them in any electronic or lamp shop...

Third: Write cruisecontrol publisher. That's a class implementing the Publisher interface of the cruisecontrol project. The sourcecode for our implementation of the publisher can be found here.

Result

It's just nice, isn't it? (Well, if it's green...)

The red lamp had a short "heating up" but the broken JUnit test was fixed "too fast" - the wax didn't really melt but grow stiff in this funny shape.