Controlling your BetaBrite with PHP
Adaptive Micro Systems likely gets most of their profit from selling signs to big clients; think Vegas sports books. However, all of their signs use a similar protocol - so giving away information on this protocol for free instead of contracting out technical support probably isn't a good business idea. As I mentioned however, there is data floating around on the Web - and you can find it in the right places if you just look.
You can download my PHP script and dissect it. You'll also need a good PHP/RSS library, for this you'll need Magpie RSS. In this sample, you can scour news information from RSS feeds and display them to your liking on your BetaBrite. This isn't the limit however, you could have it handle some CallerID or perhaps show you pending Email to be read.
For the software, make sure you read up on PHP includes, and include the aforementioned Magpie RSS files. Note that I wrote this application using PHP's Direct IO functions, but PHP versions > 5.1 won't support these DirectIO functions without downloading additional support. Alternatively, you may be able to get this to work with standard file I/O options. I haven't tried this however. You'll also have to alter my source code if you use a different serial port. While I wrote this for a Linux system, there would likely be little effort required to make it work with Windows.
Where do you get a cheap BetaBrite? I'd recommend Ebay. They generally go for $60-$100 (I bought mine at $80). You'll need an RS232 cable. This site explains wiring in excellent detail. I was able to find some wiring kits at Fry's Electronics to fit my needs perfectly, though you may have to search around for these parts.
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