Most Entertaining Hack
What it does
When hugged, the Husky will post a happy update to it's facebook page. However, if you leave it alone for too long, it gets crotchety and will beg for acknowledgement.
How I built it
There's three main aspects to this system.
- Hardware input: a bunch of push buttons have been soldered together into a coat for the dog, and wired into a breadboard. If any of these are pushed, they trigger one of the Raspberry Pi's GPIO input ports.
- Communication: The Pi is read using the typical GPIO input format.
- Software output: This was probably the most finicky of all the aspects. Posting to a Facebook page must occur through a public Facebook app using their Graph API. Creating an app requires, among other things, a privacy policy and a long-term access code, both of which are tricky to get. From there, the actual coding and posting is fairly straightforward.
Challenges I ran into
There were several challenges. First, a raspberry pi software update auto-disabled ssh, which left me with no way to get in under short notice and lack of hardware. That took a couple of hours to resolve. My original designs had to be completely reworked due to the total incompatability of my outputs 5V system with any 3.3V input, even when using a logic level shifter. The solder continuously came apart. Also, facebook requires you to create a privay policy for any public app, even if it's not intend for public availability. That was a pain.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Taught myself to solder, use facebook-graph API, and further raspberry pi GPIO skills - as well as exploring a whole bunch of new hardware gadgets!
What's next for Huggable Husky
Many, many hugs!
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