The foot counter
After I broke my first knitting counter I had an idea: We all have a screen with us all the time, the phone. I know, not a new or a novel idea, and not the first time I thought of it.
(Tangent: I still think our phones are ridiculously underused for stuff. And I don't understand why I can't just plug it into my laptop and use the keyboard and screen?)
When you knit you usually use both hands. So why not use your feet! So I built a simple two key keyboard (with A and B buttons) and a web app to keep the count.
Hardware #
The Hardware is super simple:
- Adafruit Trinket m0 or Adafruit Trinket. Both works, but the m0 starts up more quickly and is easier to program.
- A proto bord
- two push buttons
- some wiring
- some sort of box
You can use internal pull-ups in the trinket so you don't even need a resistor.
Code #
I've lost the source code, but it was just a copy paste of Adafruits keyboard example. The only thing I changed was that i changed it to send "B" instead of "Hello World\n" (row 18).
This means that I now have a two key keyboard, yay!
The second part of this is the a simple web app with two counters. You can try it at http://burningbroccoli.se/foot-counter/
The code for it is on davidlgj/foot-counter
But is it finished? #
We'll, that depends on your definition of finished. It doesn't really work. So if that is a problem, then no, it's not finished.
What's wrong with it you might ask. Doesn't it up the counter when you press the buttons? It does, but you now what else a smart phone does? It goes to sleep when you're not using it! Which means you have to wake it up before you can use your foot to press the buttons... kinda defeats the purpose.
The embarrassing thing is that I didn't figure this out until I had a beta tester actually use it.