At long last, I’ve finally released a first version of SoapBox Snap, a free and open source ladder logic editor and runtime for your PC:

After all this time, it’s finally ready? Yes. I’m admittedly a perfectionist, and yet I admit this software isn’t perfect. Software never is, really. But in the world of open source software, the question is, “is it useful?” I believe SoapBox Snap is already useful, even in this early form. You can write logic that controls your outputs, which is the entire point of this software. More features will come over time.

One really cool feature, that I’m glad made it into the first release, is a driver for Twitter. You can easily configure SoapBox Snap to watch your own Twitter feed for status updates. The driver exposes a “Last Status” signal that has the text of your last status and a signal that pulses any time your status changes. You can compare the status text to certain key phrases, like “turn on light”, and use it to drive outputs. I think it would be neat to tie it to your garage door opener, and if you forget your keys you can just pull out your phone and tweet some key phrase like, “darn it I forgot my keys!” and the garage door could open!

Please check it out, download it, and play with it. If you have any neat ideas of things you could do, please drop me a line. Have fun!