Journey vs. Destination

I was trying to work with a few other people on the ayok project so I made a map, so they could build their devices. Then they got busy and I got busy and not much happened on our stuffed animal monitoring device.

The good part of making documentation is using it myself, feeling so pleased with old-me and her amazing foresight in writing things down.

Having opted not to cave to easy money, I’m sticking to my plan of working on personal projects until after the embedded systems conference. And since my boards aren’t back yet, I can’t solder the motor boards.

Which is good because I want to build the ayok a little more. First step is actually building and thanks to that document, the hard part was finding the accelerometer I gave to my husband.

I built this up (using a solderless breadboard, well, I didn’t put on the battery-monitoring fuel gauge yet, I need to solder a header on so it can connect).

It didn’t work. Electric Imp’s APIs have changed. That’s worrisome but I after some futzing around, trying to figure things out from their examples (their docs are better but still leave many things to be desired), I managed to get the thinking-of-you functionality working again, including the web page.

What’s next? I think I’m going to make LED color depends on orientation angle (so red is x, green is y, and blue is z acceleration). That doesn’t properly use the Imp’s internet connection but I need to make the accelerometer work and that will be a pretty demo.

The whole text-me thing makes me nervous. I should see if Electric Imp has examples for that, I know they’ve been ordering pizza from the internet. I bet I can twitter to myself if the widget doesn’t get any motion. That will probably be an intermediate step.

Oh! Also, having had lunch with ayok idea generator Elizabeth, we agreed that the non-stuffed animal version should be a magnet on the fridge. If you open the fridge, proof of life for the day has been established.  (She mentioned toilet roll module as well but I’m not going to potty humor, despite the temptation.)