As a maker wanna be I am always thinking on new cool project to make but realizes that it is so simple that is no challenge to build it, so I never make it. Then it hits you, that amazing project with lots of possibilities and challenging enough. So challenging that would take you so much time to make that it never gets build neither because of the "lack of time". The result is a big box of nothing and a closet filled with components that never gets to play in the real world.
This is something that happens to me very frequently and it might happen to you as well. With this in mind I am taking on smaller projects to actually build something and involve others in doing so when possible.
This past weekend I decided to get a cheap skull ornament (about $3.99 + tax) from the a local pharmacy and trow in a few LEDs, an Arduino UNO, some python and some android code to make a little skull that I can control via my cell phone from anywhere in the world. The project was built on a weekend and now sits on my office desk to play with my co-workers, sharing the app on others phones allow them to take control of the skull eye LEDS. I plan to post a little more documentation for the project just in case that anyone wants to know about it. but all the code used is already available on my github. (https://github.com/soynerdito/SkullIOT) |
Original Skull ($3.99) |
While doing this small project I called my niece and got her involved with the Arduino. She helped me on the design process and building the bread board prototype. While doing so I challenged her to modify the blinking led code to do fun stuff and she did perfectly. So here is a video of her explaining how she did it.
Here is a video of how the skull looks like. The android app is a little different since because of my "engineering" skills I deleted and had to write it again. The video is in Spanish, so sorry in advance.