Inspiration
This year, our team was very interested in trying out a hardware hack. When we heard about QRT's challenges to visualise the crypto exchange market, we knew what we had to do. It was time to augment some bananas!
What it does
We created a banana with a built-in TFT LCD display that displays predictions about profitable trades and shows historical trend graphs. These augmented bananas use capacitance to detect when the user picks them up or throws them in the air. This allows the bananas to respond to interaction and know when to display new information.
How we built it
- We build a python application using the websockets library to stream trade data from Binance's WSS API
- We perform analysis on the trade data to make predictions of profitable trades
- We expose these predictions via a HTTP endpoint using python's flask library
- We augment a ESP microcontroller into a banana which fetches predictions from our HTTP server
- We display predictions and candlestick charts from our server on the TFT LCD in the banana
- We soldered a wire onto the microcontroller to take capacitance readings of the banana so it knows when it is being held
Challenges we ran into
The very first challenge we encountered was gathering the data from Binance via a websocket. The Binance documentation was helpful but didn't have any specific examples and TLS authentication was a additional problem.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We performed surgery on a banana
- We measured the capacitance of a banana to determine when somebody is holding it
What we learned
- Bananas don't last long after augmentation.
- Websockets are amazing - once they start working.
What's next for Fortune Fruits
The potential is limitless. A larger display could provide new pineapples perspectives, miniaturisation could allow for keyhole surgery on a grape to take place, or we could even witness a fully wireless watermelon.
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