Aggregating information with Huginn

Smart Collection

The web application Huginn [1] continuously monitors several user-defined websites and Internet services. On the basis of the information published there, it draws up a summary, which it then mails to your breakfast table. In its report, Huginn might refer to the weather for your location or send an alert when Twitter sees many posts on a keyword such as net neutrality. You might receive an abstract like, "Twitter yesterday had an unusually high number of posts on net neutrality, the new XKCD comic published last night is all about drones, and the weather will be rainy today."

Much like the Internet service IFTTT [2], Huginn automatically triggers actions for certain events (e.g., if the text on a news page changes or the online shop reduces the price of the laptop you have your sights on). It is also useful for Internet of Things (IoT) projects. With a few exceptions, users access Huginn through a web interface.

Sophisticated

Huginn is available under the MIT license and runs on your server. It needs at least 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor. If you want to run Huginn on a low-power computer like the Raspberry Pi, you need to manage the software's zest for action through configuration. The required modifications are explained in the Huginn wiki [3].

The software is based on Ruby on Rails [4] and therefore requires an installed Ruby environment; in fact, it needs version 2.2 or 2.3 of the reference implementation. The alternative Ruby implementations JRuby and Rubinius will not do the job.

Huginn's acquired data ends up in a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. The web interface delivers Nginx [5], but

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