Project: Twitter Mood Light: The World’s Mood in a Box

Creator: RandomMatrix on Instructables (Source: https://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Mood-Light-The-Worlds-Mood-in-a-Box/)

The Twitter Mood Box is a color-changing box that tells you how the world is “feeling” at the moment. It uses the Twitter API, an Arduino, a WiFly wireless module, an RGB LED, and more. The WiFly module is used to connect to the Internet, and the Arduino uses the Twitter API to scrape and detect sentiment in news-related tweets. Given an unusually high number of tweets that express a general worldwide emotion or reaction, the Arduino will communicate with the RGB LED to display a color “mood.”

The mood colors are as follows:

Red = Anger

Yellow = Happy

Pink = Love

White = Fear

Green = Envy

Orange = Surprise

Blue = Sadness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6aVd_PSDWU

I think this is a really neat project that expresses the collective human consciousness (as gathered by Twitter) in a unique and artistic way. If the Mood Box flashes red or blue one day, it can signal that a significant world event has happened, and be a trigger to go online and check the news. Frequently news events across the world seem far away and it’s not difficult to feel attached; I think this Arduino application is a subtle but an effective reminder to appreciate the world wider than our own neighborhood.