PROJECT: CASCADE

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  The Arduino driving the LED strip from the signal from my laptop

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  The lone LED that responds to an upcoming event

Inspiration

I wanted something that was more visually clear about deadlines that are approaching. Google calendar is a great tool, but it doesn't always make it super obvious what are the important deadlines approaching.

What it does

Get information from your Google calendar and displays it on a strip of LEDs. As the deadlines get closer and closer, the color used to display the event gets more aggressive and starts blinking.

How I built it

Using an arduino and Node.js. Node drives the arduino instead of compiling c++ to run on it.

Challenges I ran into

Everything was a challenge. I originally wanted to use Python on a raspberry pi, but I realized learning a completely new language would probably be out of the scope of this hackathon when combined with all the other details I had to figure out. I also originally wanted to use a DragonBoard, but found that there was little to no documentation for it online. While using a raspberry pi, I began to recognize the disadvantages of such a small computer, as it started overheating just from installing the packages I would need to even begin making the program. When I finally pivoted to an arduino, I had trouble following along to get it to communicate with Node. I also struggled to decipher the calendar API, then to get all of the three different technologies (LED strip, calendar, and Node) to communicate with each other.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I figured out how to drive an arduino with code directly off my computer, I got back into JavaScript and Node.JS, which I haven't used since high school, learned the basics of editing files in Vim, and I finally figured out how to get some usable information from the calendar API.

What I learned

See above

What's next for PROJECT: CASCADE

First step moving forward: debugging. From then on, I want to continually add functionality.

The endgame would be driving this from a raspberry pi instead of my laptop. I would also like to implement options to see the calendar from different scopes (everything within the next week, two weeks, due today, etc.), and I want to add messages in Morse code of encouragement and urgency to the events.

It would be optimal to also implement other uses for the array of LEDs that this uses, I.E. also having a mode for mood lighting or to replace a wake up alarm with something that might be less intense.

Built With

• node.js