Raspberry Pi Bell for online giving notifications for a radiothon

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Jeff Geerling

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Dec 14, 2020, 7:06:31 PM12/14/20

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Just posting this in case anyone else might find it interesting!

I was listening to Covenant Network on the radio in St. Louis (https://ourcatholicradio.org) — they have a radiothon to support their operations a couple times a year. This week they're doing another one, and I'm on to talk about the bell tomorrow from 1-2 p.m.!

Anyways, I was listening online, and noticed that when people called in to donate, the phone would go off on-air, encouraging donors through a form of positive reinforcement. But when I donated online... nothing!

So I set to work and built the hardware and software for this project over the course of two days, and got it working for the last day of their last radiothon.

Now, when someone donates online, the little python script (which is open source! See: https://github.com/geerlingguy/pi-bell-slapper) sees the email notification after a minute or so, and dings the bell, and you can hear it on-air!