At first I was a little skeptical at how I could make something so digital into an edible experience. I did some research on different email notifiers and found that they are usually audible, distracting and annoying, and they only indicate and email received without incentivizing the reading of emails. I decided to remedy these issues by creating a fun, bright, incentive system for reading your emails.
My concept was for an M&M to drop into a glass every time an email is received, and the M&Ms are “released” to you once you have read all the emails. I drew inspiration from other DIY candy dispensers, especially this one, but decided to design my own acrylic candy stand. I designed the stand around a repurposed wine bottle and laser cut it out of acrylic so the bright colored M&Ms are visible throughout the spinning. The stand is adhered together by silicon sealer, for a solid attachment with some flexibility and give.
If this was a fully-functional unit, the white box would be a servo, to rotate the wheel, and it would connect to the circuit board that is programmed to relay when an email is sent and read. My goal is to make this unit fully functional once I’ve learned the necessary skills.
I also made a stop-motion video of the email notifier working. This video is my first time making and editing a stop-motion, so I used a few different tutorials to learn how to make one. I got a general idea of how to do stop-motion at this Instructables website: http://www.instructables.com/id/Stop-Motion-3/. I used iMovie to make the video, and this youtube video was the most helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipE3nCjI0IU. The final tutorial I used helped me with the music on the video: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=596923.