I travel a lot for my job, and having a newish 8 mo old daughter, I often wonder, is she thinking of her dear old dad? I’ve had the idea for a while now to create a teddy bear with buttons in the paws that send some sort of notification over wifi to my phone. With the advent of the Amazon Dash buttons being cheap and using very little power over time, I decided it was time to get to work. Using a Pi Zero, some small 3D printed parts and a needle and thread, the project came together quickly. Since I already had a Pi Zero and WiFi Adapter laying around, the project only cost me $25 for the bear and the two Dash Buttons.
Using the IFTTT.com service, it’s possible to also hook this up to Adafruit.io and track the entries of the inputs. This is just the beginning of what I’d like to add to the teddy. Eventually I’ll add some sort of Feedback mechanism so that I can send an indicator back to show that I’ve received, as for right now, I’ll just smile and know that she’s playing with the bear.
After some minor surgery and some programming of a pi, I had the results I was looking for! This will make a great first Valentine’s Day gift.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
I travel a lot for my job, and having a newish 8 mo old daughter, I often wonder, is she thinking of her dear old dad? I’ve had the idea for a while now to create a teddy bear with buttons in the paws that send some sort of notification over wifi to my phone. With the advent of the Amazon Dash buttons being cheap and using very little power over time, I decided it was time to get to work. Using a Pi Zero, some small 3D printed parts and a needle and thread, the project came together quickly. Since I already had a Pi Zero and WiFi Adapter laying around, the project only cost me $25 for the bear and the two Dash Buttons.
