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.
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