Just wanted to share a project that’s been in the works that’s finally working, using Adabox 004 plus the feather from Adabox 003, along with the Adafruit LIS3DH (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2809). My wife and I trained our dog to ring a set of bells at the back door when she needed to go outside. Problem was when we moved to a smaller place and let her have free run at night, the sound of the bells just wasn’t loud enough to wake us up at night, and we had a few accidents. So I decided to make something that’s a little louder and doesn’t get set off when our cats are just walking around at night (i.e. no proximity sensors).
This ended up having 3 parts to it: a sensor by the door to tell when the dog needs to go out, another board to act as a receiver and play a message, and a small web app to act as a go between the two feather huzzah boards.
The sensor by the door hangs from the set of bells she already uses. It uses the Adafruit LIS3DH accelerometer to detect when she bumps it with her nose (took a lot of trial and error to get it to trigger easily but not go off randomly). If it detects a bump, it makes an http request to my web app.
On my night stand, I’ve got the board / speaker from Adabox 004 setup. Every 5 seconds it does an http request and pings my little web app to see if there’s been a hit at the back door it hasn’t read. If there is, is plays track001.mp3 which is a recording of “Kona needs to go outside” that loops a few times, and lets the web app know to mark that entry as “read” so it won’t do it again. I could’ve just only stored one “hit” at a time, but I figured it’d be interesting to go back and view old data. Since it was going to be hanging out on my nightstand, this one also got a nice 3d printed case to house it as well.
Just wanted to share! Definitely over engineering the problem a bit, but it was a lot of fun and nice to find an every day use for some Adaboxes.
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 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey