{"id":984,"date":"2013-08-06T11:30:17","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T18:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/?p=984"},"modified":"2013-09-12T09:21:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T16:21:27","slug":"still-thinking-of-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/2013\/08\/still-thinking-of-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Still thinking of you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having a <a title=\"Thinking of you scarf\" href=\"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/2013\/08\/thinking-of-you-scarf\/\" target=\"_blank\">project <\/a>made me quit playing with my Electric Imp and start getting to work with it. The Squirrel language taunted me for awhile but, happily, I got some help from Matt, my podcast guest, and things went well after that.<\/p>\n<p>Now, when I set a color (RGB) value to a webpage, it sends the data to electric imp&#8217;s servers which sends the data to my board and, poof, the widget turns the right color.<\/p>\n<p>Here is how that webpage looks:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/HowNotToMakeAWebsite.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-985\" alt=\"How not to make a website\" src=\"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/HowNotToMakeAWebsite-300x210.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/HowNotToMakeAWebsite-300x210.png 300w, https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/HowNotToMakeAWebsite.png 742w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ummm&#8230; yeah. Maybe not so beautiful. I&#8217;ve made many websites. But I haven&#8217;t done any in years so I don&#8217;t know where to start. Asking Google leads to a multitude of slightly terrifying, scammy results. <a title=\"Logical Elegance\" href=\"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Logical Elegance<\/a> was done in a mac-based program by Christopher. I think it is beautiful but overkill for what I want. If someone asked me how a non-tech person should make a website, I&#8217;d point them to <a title=\"Square Space website building (and hosting)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.squarespace.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">squarespace <\/a>(which I use for the <a title=\"Making Embedded Systems podcast\" href=\"http:\/\/embedded.fm\/\" target=\"_blank\">podcast site<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t want a website, I want just a page.\u00a0Then when you want people to (wink? tap? ping?) your light, you email them the page and they use that. I don&#8217;t want to host yet another website. And since I don&#8217;t need to, a standalone page makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose I want the page to be pretty simple. I don&#8217;t think people should put in the color, they should put in their name (use a cookie to save it). The name should transmogrify to a color automatically, though the user should be able to choose another color if they want (probably from a color wheel, [note: another cookie]).<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ll sketch this out on paper (storyboarding is critical) and then I&#8217;ll find a tool. Maybe I&#8217;ll do it in squarespace for the easy editing and then look at the html to help me figure it out. Or maybe I&#8217;ll use my Safari Online to find a relevant book.<\/p>\n<p>But there is more. Once the webpage is unutterably lovely, what happens next?<\/p>\n<p>I think I want to build a small number of these. Let&#8217;s say one to five. I&#8217;m using off the shelf parts and do not want to spin a board myself. This is a craft project. I&#8217;m putting a bit of work in to make it cute but then I&#8217;ll be done. Like a scarf.<\/p>\n<p>Though I&#8217;ve wandered away from a scarf because, hey, I don&#8217;t know how to knit. Also, it needs to connect to one WiFi to get the info, a scarf moves around too much.<\/p>\n<p>In thinking about how to package it, I started wondering about making it a hanging ornament. And I started wondering how to sell it. Happily, the answer came from the same place: <a title=\"Jar Synth on Etsy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.etsy.com\/listing\/157571917\/drone-jar-synthesizer\" target=\"_blank\">in a jar on Etsy<\/a>. (I was searching for Etsy and electronics to see if they have a no-electronics policy: nope.)<\/p>\n<p>I know Etsy isn&#8217;t where you think of when selling or buying electronic products. But if I think about this a a hobby\/craft project, it makes sense. <span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">I&#8217;d be quite happy to recoup my losses, I don&#8217;t need to make money on this. I wonder how much I&#8217;d need to sell it for. Hmmm&#8230;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 16px;\"><a title=\"Electric Imp on Digikey\" href=\"http:\/\/www.digikey.com\/product-detail\/en\/IMP001-US-R-ENG\/1413-1003-ND\/3979638\" target=\"_blank\">Electric Imp<\/a>: $25<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Electric Imp <a title=\"April breakout board\" href=\"http:\/\/www.digikey.com\/product-search\/en?FV=fff40036,fff802bc,fffc0585&amp;chp=0\" target=\"_blank\">breakout board<\/a> (April): $10<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"BlinkM LED\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sparkfun.com\/products\/8579\" target=\"_blank\">BlinkM I2C LED<\/a>: $13 (though this could be replaced with a $2 LED)<\/li>\n<li>Battery solution: I think that something like <a title=\"USB LiPo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sparkfun.com\/products\/10161\" target=\"_blank\">this <\/a>will work so say $15 + $8 for the <a title=\"Battery\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sparkfun.com\/products\/341\" target=\"_blank\">battery<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then I&#8217;d need a jar ($2) and I&#8217;d need to cut a hole for a mini-USB header (for charging the battery) and one showing the edge of the Electric Imp (needed to program its WiFi). I might add some plastic baffle-bits so you didn&#8217;t see the electronics, only the warm glow of the LED. Though, maybe I&#8217;d leave it looking techy, depends on if it looks nice. Total that all up, I&#8217;d need to charge $75 to clear my costs (assuming the expensive LED).<\/p>\n<p>(Mental note: widget should blink white once every hour when the battery starts to get low. Or maybe the Electric Imp agent should email the owner to let them know.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I guess the website and the battery are the two big tasks left to do. The battery has me a little worried; it doesn&#8217;t seem like there are any LEGO-like blocks to put together that will work. I woke up thinking about that and how someone should already have made such a board. But all the ones I found aren&#8217;t quite the right voltage for an Imp.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;m not there yet. No need to borrow against future problems. I can play in the space of getting things done and dreaming about solutions.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having a project made me quit playing with my Electric Imp and start getting to work with it. The Squirrel language taunted me for awhile but, happily, I got some help from Matt, my podcast guest, and things went well after that. Now, when I set a color (RGB) value to a webpage, it sends [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,43,5,34],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ayok","tag-entrepreneur","tag-gadgets","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}