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by coreyp_1 868 days ago
I don't "do" reddit, so I'll post mine here.

Back when I was a prof., there was a monitor mounted on the wall outside my office whose display I had control of (it was from the previous prof and I inherited it).

I connected it to a RPi and set it to display a website. The website was one that I wrote that did 2 things. First, it displayed a random XKCD comic, rotating every 30 seconds, as well as a scrolling message at the bottom (usually just a disclaimer that the images were chosen at random). Second, it was an endpoint for Twilio.

The end result was that I could send a text message from my phone and it would display that message on the monitor on the wall outside my office. It rejected any message that was not from my number. I used it to display things like: "Had to run across campus. Be back at 1:30." or "Left for the day." And, since people would often stop and read the comics, they would definitely see the message.