Maketimeclock

April 7, 2014

Prototype 1

Very excited to show off the first prototype I'm testing this week.

Prototype 1

On the outside you'll notice a single toggle switch and a small LCD screen. This display is from the old Nokia 5110 phones. If you're like me, you spent a good chunk of your childhood playing snake on one of these babies.

Inside 1 is powered by an Electric Imp. This is the brain that receives the input from the switch and sends commands to the display. They have an interesting approach as it bundles a whole platform with their hardware. All their chips connect to their cloud service to receive automatic firmware updates and any internet requests from the device are funneled through their servers first.

(They also have a neat solution for entering your local WIFI credentials on a device without a keyboard.)

I've also setup a basic API server to receive notifications when the switch is flipped. Eventually this will used to track time towards goals and provide notifications and reminders.

In the next post we'll detail some of the testing process and findings.