Introducing open source upvote bot - @turbot

Motivation

---

I have been experimenting steem-python and steem blockchain to see
what's going on under the hood. We do have a lot of upvote bots in the scene,
yet I had no idea how they work in detail.

With the help of awesome steem-python package, I have managed to create
a simple upvote bot. @turbot

This bot is not the best bot available and it won't be. it's pretty miserable at the moment as you can see from its eyes in the logo. But it can be a good starting point for potential steem blockchain developers.

Turbot does the following though:

• Listen the blockchain for new blocks
• Process these blocks and transactions.
• If a transaction directed to the bot account, turbot spots it and upvotes
  the post in the memo.
• Turbot upvotes the related content with a random vote weight between 1-100.
• You can safely start/stop the bot. It stores the state and do not
  make duplicate processing on already processed blocks.

Refunds

---

Turbot refunds SBD if:

• the post is archived
• the post is already upvoted
• transaction doesn't cover the minimum SBD
• the post URL is invalid

Installation and Running

---

$ virtualenv -p python3 turbot-env
$ source turbot-env/bin/activate
$ git clone https://github.com/emre/turbot.git
$ cd turbot
$ vim turbot/settings.py # edit accordingly
$ PRIVATE_POSTING_KEY=[BOT_ACCOUNT_POSTING_KEY] ACTIVE_KEY=[BOT_ACCOUNT_ACTIVE_KEY] python turbot/turbot.py

Configuration Parameters

---

MINIMUM_SBD_FOR_UPVOTE = float(0.002)
UPVOTE_WEIGHTS = (+1, +100)
BOT_ACCOUNT = 'turbot'

@turbot is now online for experimental usage, you can use it, it doesn't have a good STEEM power since
his wallet is very tiny but he will make sure you will get the upvote. :)

Forgot to mention, @turbot's source code is located under github. see @emre/turbot to study its source code.

Warning: This software is not production ready and may contain bugs. It's an experimental project for me to learn the steem block chain. You should make required checks and enhancements if you want to use it in production.

Source: Logo of the turbot