https://anotherjesse.com/categories/hardware/Recent content in Hardware on anotherjesse.comHugoen-usSat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://anotherjesse.com/posts/programmable-cat/Sat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://anotherjesse.com/posts/programmable-cat/<h2 id="idea">Idea</h2> <p>The family was excited to decorate to halloween this year, and several of the decorations came with <em>Try Me</em> buttons. The buttons were external to the decoration - and seem to be simple momentary switches (when they are pressed the circuit is closed for the duration of the button press).</p> <p>It would be neat to add these to our programmable space using a tiny ESP-8266 microcontroller / MQTT.</p> <p>Based on success of connecting <a href="https://anotherjesse.com/posts/miffy-super-powers">Miffy</a> to our local programmable space, this seemed approachable for an electronics novice like me.</p>https://anotherjesse.com/posts/miffy-super-powers/Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000https://anotherjesse.com/posts/miffy-super-powers/<p>When my oldest daughter was born, my dear friend <a href="https://twitter.com/bs">Britt Selvitelle</a> gave us a gift of <a href="https://www.mrmaria.com/miffy-xl-lamp/">Miffy Lamp</a> from Japan.</p> <p><img src="miffy.png" alt="Miffy Lamp"></p> <h1 id="my-problems-with-power">My problems with power</h1> <p>Miffy had two &ldquo;problems&rdquo;, the first being the power cord for the lamp didn&rsquo;t fit into american outlets. The second was the bulb being incandescent consumed lots of power and created lots of heat (and rather bright if I remember correctly).</p> <h1 id="solution-lets-put-it-on-the-internet">Solution: Let&rsquo;s put it on the internet!</h1> <p>Having learned about ESP-8266, a cheap &amp; tiny microcontroller that has WiFi, I thought it would be cool to give the bunny an API.</p>