LoveLink

Inspiration

I thought about making small and sweet for my girlfriend. It's been an idea in the back of my mind to make something that she can use and know that I'm there even if I'm not. Then, I had spare ESP8266s lying around and decided to make it into a communications thing.

What it does

The device has a very simple job to print out cute messages and cats and words of affection to a screen. But, these are all activated by the other ESP of a pair sending a "ping". Then, the task scheduler switches up and handles drawing the image/animation. Both devices of a pair can simultaneously ping each from about 50ft with the only caveat being that they are paired for life.

How we built it

I threw together an ESP and a simple OLED screen and found out that there was a protocol for ESP devices called ESP NOW that allowed them to communicate securely just with each other. The actual programming was merging together libraries, writing original code to glue them together, and then modifying it all over again. Part of the work also went into translating BitMap images using separate software into arrays of bytes that the ESP can read and send over I2C to the screen.

Challenges we ran into

Time, and time, and time. There was not enough time to implement a web app upload new cutesy pings to the ESPs. Not enough time to print a beautiful case for the device. Not enough time to make more pings and even little two-player games. Finally, not enough time to integrate it with sensors and even make an emergency panic button in case of someone needing help.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting it up and running!

What we learned

ESP NOW, wiring things together, soldering has improved, working with embedded multitasking.

What's next for LoveLink

I'm going to flesh it out how I want it and make a proper one for my girlfriend.

Built With

• arduino
• cpp
• esp8266
• paint.net
• ssd1306
• visual-studio