---
title: "The Agile Ambient Orb"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/23/the-agile-ambient-orb.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/23/the-agile-ambient-orb.html"
published: "2006-12-23T16:29:04"
updated: "2006-12-23T16:29:04"
tags: ["Agile", "Agile Related"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "The Ambient Orb is one of the coolest gadgets around. You can program it to show any color depending on any status, so you can actually use it to show the status of your continuous Integration Build. Check out this…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# The Agile Ambient Orb

By Roy Osherove December 23, 2006 In [Agile](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile), [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related)

**Historical article** · Originally published December 23, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

The [Ambient Orb](http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html) is one of the coolest gadgets around. You can program it to show any color depending on any status, so you can actually use it to show the status of your continuous Integration Build. Check out [this article](http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/articles/169058.aspx) for a step by step tutorial to make it work for your team (using Nant).

How cool is it?

Check out this movie from YouTube:

[![](https://osherove.com/img/video/yt-m_9KTT8Z7Bg.jpg)Play videoAmbient Orbs MP3 Visualization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9KTT8Z7Bg)

## More in Agile

[All posts in Agile](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile)

- Jan 29, 2007

    ### [Catch me speaking at DevTeach](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/1/29/catch-me-speaking-at-devteach.html)

- Jan 29, 2007

    ### [Cheat Sheets for ASP.NET, Regex, Mock Objects and more](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/1/29/cheat-sheets-for-aspnet-regex-mock-objects-and-more.html)

- Dec 14, 2006

    ### [Catch me talking Agile at the Israeli .NET Architects user group](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/14/catch-me-talking-agile-at-the-israeli-net-architects-user-gr.html)

- Dec 10, 2006

    ### [Macro - Workaround for VS 2005 unit testing build problem](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/10/macro-workaround-for-vs-2005-unit-testing-build-problem.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/