I'm always keen try new and novel ways to keep in touch with the status of my software projects. Fortunately, Team Foundation Server provides many ways to do this. While the Build Wallboard is fun if you have a spare monitor and machine lying around, I wanted to experiment with some inexpensive dedicated devices, and so Brian the Build Bunny was born.
Brian is a Nabaztag smart rabbit. He reads out details of check-ins and builds. If a build has failed then his ears go down to show how sad he feels, but if you fix the build his ears will soon pick up again.
I've had Brian for about a year now waiting to do this project, but when I tried it in the past I always found the response times from the rabbit to be too slow. However earlier this year, the Nabaztag developers updated the code running the rabbits so that they are now using the XMPP (Jabber) protocol to receive updates and the service now seems pretty good.
Brian is now sitting on my desk chattering away and letting me know what is happening in TFS. If you want to find out more about how he works and see him in action then take a look at the video. If your company blocks YouTube but you have Silverlight installed then you can view a higher quality version of the video courtesy of the Windows Live Streaming service. I'll go through the code behind Brian in a later post if there is any interest, but it is pretty much a standard TFS event listener that then sends text to the rabbit using the Nabaztag API.
I LOVE IT!!! I WANT ONE!!!
Cheers,
ET
LOL... That rocks.
I want a Build Bunny now! Do you think we could talk MS into giving some away at PDC? ;)
Thanks for posting this. :)
Awesome!
Absolutely love it :)
"your bunny TFS..."
(by analogy with "your bunny wrote.." and used to be said by russian developers..)
I suspect that "your bunny VSS" would be a more common phrase ;-)
very good !!!
I love it Martin! You continue to amaze me!!! I think Thomson Reuters might need a "Build Bunny!"
Wow Martin this is great. I love it. Please do share some code wisdom when you get the chance... I think I'm going to order one now!
The Nabaztags are great. We've already two of them. Especially funny if they're trying to speak German.
More in German: http://www.agimatec.de/blog/2008/04/talking-builds-oder-killerhase-im-schafspelz/
I would love to get an overview of the code you use to control Brian with TFS. I just convinced my boss to order one for our office.
@Dave: Today I released a Nabaztag plugin for the continuous build server TeamCity.
You can check out the Java sources at google code:
http://code.google.com/p/buildbunny/
I just started a .Net-based API over at CodePlex.
http://www.codeplex.com/NabaztagLib
I smell a killer app. :)
Martin, I'll be calling later to license the IP rights for North America. I'm off to call China to find a factory...
- John
Nabaztag rabbits are awesome!!
I just launched NabazGroove, a playful application to connect Microsoft Office Groove 2007 with a Nabaztag.
If you are interested, you can have a look here: http://blog.fbarbin.com/nabazgroove/
(NabazGroove will also be demoed during TechED Dev at Barcelona)
he i'm a student from the netherlands
i study application development
i resently baught an nabaztag
i am very interested in the code used for this project
so i hope you can email me the files you used to make this happen
i would really appriciate it
thanks in advance
Elbert van Eck
Elbert - see http://www.woodwardweb.com/vsts/behind_brian_th.html
Good luck,
Martin.