After attempting the exercises this week, I think my board is broken 🙁 I got the basic LED blink exercise, but when it came to connecting the board to wifi, I got this nonsense:
At Becky’s suggestion, I submitted the problem to the Adafruit customer service forum and got one quick followup asking for more information, but haven’t heard back since I sent them the code and output. So we’ll see…
It was my first time using the board, so I’m not sure if I broke it somehow or if it was a manufacturing error. Maybe they’ll be nice to me and replace it?
Anyway, here are my three final project ideas:
Growing Plant Interval Timer
I’ve had this vision for awhile now of a timer with no numbers in the shape of a plant. The plant would be composed of LEDs behind diffusive panels. As time on your “on” intervals increases, the plant will “grow”, and on your “off” intervals it will “shrink”. Ideally, this product would be wifi- or bluetooth-enabled to make it easy for the user to set their time intervals.
Amplified Noise Interference
You know those cool fancy noise canceling headphones? Well I want to take those and essentially make them worse. By having a speaker that emits destructive interference signals for only specific audio inputs (like sirens, construction noises, or semi trucks), workplaces could be made quieter but not too quiet, homes might not worry as much about early-morning construction, and walking around in the city might not feel as much like an assault on your ears.
This project would require a (better?) microphone and a speaker, but it would be awesome if it could use your phone speaker or even your normal headphones.
Swiss Army Jacket
It would be awesome to create a wearable for outdoor safety. I am envisioning some sort of jacket with built-in lights and warmers, powered safely somehow by batteries (and maybe solar powered?) It would also be wonderful if the jacket could send an emergency signal if the user is in distress.
The jacket would require some combination of the following components: switches and buttons, white and red LEDs, electric hand warmer, an accelerometer to sense falls, a pulse sensor to sense drops in pulse, an impact sensor (especially near the head and neck), and perhaps a meteorology set (thermometer and/or barometer and/or humidity) if I get really excited about feature creep.
Your first idea reminds me of a few of your classmates’ ideas around timer lights for teeth-brushing, etc. The form sounds super cool!
your second idea is very technically challenging. The way noise cancelling headphones work is by detecting consistent ambient frequencies to counter-cancel. If the sounds are sudden and changing, the effect cancellation effect doesn’t work.
Your third concept is fully of feature creep. Pick one feature! =D Modeling a dangerous fall vs bumps in the road is a complex programing challenge, and difficult to test, too. Here’s a product that does what you describe: https://learn.adafruit.com/icedot-teardown/inside-the-icedot?view=all
Perhaps you’d like to visualize the weather or wearer’s heartbeat? Here’s an easy and reliable sensor to use with Arduino: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1077
I encourage you to narrow your focus if you choose to pursue this concept– who is your user?
Creating a picture of a specific person can help you hone in on critical features and help make design decisions.
Email me with any questions!