The best use of a Raspberry Pi is to spam rubbish ISPs

22 Feb 2016

Sick and tired of having to ring your internet service provider (ISP) to complain about a below-par internet connection? Well, one novel Raspberry Pi owner created an ingenious method of complaint.

We’ve seen the Raspberry Pi being used for a number of different pet projects, from making something that is considered worthy of sending into space, to a home automation device, but what if it could be used to seek revenge, too?

Well, one programmer in the US with a love for the humble Raspberry Pi decided to seek revenge on his ISP, Comcast, over the poor standard of his broadband.

The customer, using the pseudonym AlekseyP, has been putting up with an issue that many – and I stress many – of us have experienced, that being, being advertised a broadband speed, but getting less-than half of that.

In this person’s case, he was signed up to a 150Mbps speed from Comcast, but in many instances receiving a speed of less than a third of that, typically between 10Mbps and 30Mbps.

In a post published to Reddit, the person explains in great detail that he actually never contacted Comcast to tell them about the issue, but rather programmed his Raspberry Pi to run a speed test on his internet speed every two hours.

Like Speed for broadband, if the broadband speed drops below 50Mbps, AlekseyP’s Twitter account will send an automated tweet to Comcast to let them know it’s gone down which is a pretty regular occurrence.

It doesn’t mean that the person’s efforts will actually come to anything, but it’s funny to think that Comcast’s social media manager is likely on the end of dozens of daily tweets, all thanks to the work of a little Raspberry Pi and a bit of coding.

Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic.com’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note.

Snail with ethernet cable image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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