Controlling a Toaster With Atlassian JIRA – SXSW Trade Show 2011

10Mar11

Our very own Chris Pepe is an Atlassian ninja. He develops custom solutions for our clients using Atlassian tools. Chris has configured JIRA to interface with countless software and systems – and has now configured JIRA to interface with a toaster. Check it out LIVE at our SXSW Trade Show 2011 booth!

Filed under: JIRA, News, Videos | 6 Comments
Tags: 2011, Atlassian, Chris Pepe, JIRA, SXSW, trade show

6 Responses to “Controlling a Toaster With Atlassian JIRA – SXSW Trade Show 2011”

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1 Matt Doar on March 10, 2011 said:

Nice! But it would be even cooler if when the toaster popped up the toast, a signal could be sent to something on the laptop (Python script/email script) to change the state of the JIRA issue to the “Toast is Ready” state.

What did you use to send the signal from JIRA to the power strip – USB or something else?

~Matt

Reply
- 2 Christopher on March 11, 2011 said:
  
  Matt –
  Believe me I went on a tear with the possibilities and designed something Rube Goldberg would be proud of. Ultimately I went with simple. This all came up because of a comment one of our team members made about JIRA’s flexibility and us being able to integrate with anything, even a toaster. I was just goofing around but its turned out to be pretty popular.
  
  I found that PDU in the trash (but no APC controller) so I reverse engineered the circuit and built a controller for it. The controller uses an ATmega32 and a FTDI USB serial chip to do RS232 over USB. A “better” JIRA controlled toaster oven would be ethernet enabled and have full thermal profile control using thermocouples and relays internal to the oven (that’s how you build a reflow oven for soldering surface mount PCBs).
  
  Full automation was a bit beyond the scope of my goofing around and I wanted to show a more JIRA oriented *process* – JIRA isn’t intended for full automation so I wanted to work with it in a way that made sense (in as much as it could with a toaster). In the video I play the assignee and reporter. Finding this balance is something we are working on now for an actually useful device.
  
  Thanks for watching!
  
  Reply
3 David Bonilla on March 16, 2011 said:

GRRREAT JOB Chris ^_^

It’s probably the best (and more original) way to show visually the flexibility and integration of JIRA I have ever seen.

Best Regards from the far and sunny Spain,
David

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- 4 Christian Lane on March 28, 2011 said:
  
  Thanks David! More to follow.
  
  Reply
  - 5 David Bonilla on March 29, 2011 said:
    
    guys, are you going to the Summit?