well me and my bro were bored so we made a little program that makes a led connected to the serial port blink whenever you get a message
ok connect the led to an comm port(if you have problems getting it working and you have 2 comm ports try them both !)
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You need:
* Programming skills
* LED (and maybe resistors)
* Serial cable
Basically it works like this:
You connect the anode leg of the LED up to a data pin on the serial lead/port and connect the cathode (short leg) of the LED to one of the grounds.
Then you just write up some software in whichever programming language you know that accesses this serial port and sends out the corresponding data signal which will turn that data bit on (basically switches +5 through the pin).
Once you got this...
take it a step further (if you know electronics):
Create a small box with a led, buzzer and a RF-receiver. On the PC-end put a RF-sender (use the USB-ports instead, this would be nicer and not hard to program either).
Now you've got a home-made-messenger beeper