by ljf on 7/6/17, 8:53 PM
Reminds of a story my father tells - he's a stage designer and one day one of the older actors was complaining that he couldn't see from his position back stage to know when to come on set. The stage manager set up an early cctv system for him (this was 1980something) to help him see.
The actor then complained that he had a hard time seeing the black and white screen so while the stage manager went to see how he could improve his set up the actor asked my father for a penknife, cut a small hole in the set that he could put his eye against, and said "that'll do".
by notatoad on 7/6/17, 7:20 PM
It's a cool project for sure, but i'm not sure how i feel about training people that it's okay to interrupt you while you have your headphones on. That's the only way i get peace in my office.
by WaxProlix on 7/6/17, 6:08 PM
I had no idea `screen` could do that, and I've been using it for years. Assumed you'd have to use some sort of telnet to communicate with the board. Very cool stuff.
by s73ver on 7/6/17, 8:52 PM
Tie it into your company's project planning software. Instead of doing this, what it does is anytime someone tries to add something, saying "This should be easy, right?", it adds a month and a half to the gantt chart.
by tyingq on 7/6/17, 7:31 PM
Are the Amazon Dash buttons still hackable? If so, they are cheap...$5, and shouldn't require as much physical alteration.
by stevekemp on 7/7/17, 4:30 AM
Cute project. I started getting into working with Arduinos and then ESP8266 devices late last year.
I built a simple "button-thing", but to make it more flexible it just posts a message to an MQ-queue. That way anything on my system can listen for the events, and react.
At the moment it is used to play "alarm.mp3" on my desktop-PC, but in the past it was configured to turn out all the lights in my flat.
https://steve.fi/Hardware/d1-alarm-button/
by m-p-3 on 7/7/17, 1:48 AM
I'm planning to do something similar, but mostly to alert me that someone is looking for me at my desk at work. The ESP8266 would connect to our Guest WiFi and sent a request to IFTTT, which would in turn either send me a notification on my phone, or change my blink(1) light to a different color.
by Animats on 7/6/17, 6:41 PM
What does the device use WiFi for? It's a hard-wired USB peripheral. Why is it bringing up WiFi?
Bringing up WiFi on a device with no security and a keyboard-type connection to a more important machine is a recipe for being taken over.
by gitpusher on 7/6/17, 8:41 PM
Ha! Neat idea. Nicely done
by MrRadar on 7/6/17, 7:00 PM
Thanks for requiring Javascript to view your static blog page. /s
by ams6110 on 7/6/17, 5:58 PM
Cute, but seems like overkill. Why not a $1.00 pushbutton and a flashlight bulb?
by lostgame on 7/6/17, 7:31 PM
>> 'easy'
>> Requires a soldering iron
Pick one. :P No, this is a cute project, though.