Time Capsule

A message from your past self but without using a keyboard

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Inspiration

2000s was a golden decade for movies and TV shows which take us back to those fun and laidback days when Friends was there to get you through thick and thin, Bridget Jones to uplift you, The Dark Knight for a sense of thrill and many more.

What it does

The project is a Time Capsule, which takes a message and displays it after a set time (15 seconds for the purpose of this video), but there's a catch, the message has to be typed in morse code using customized hardware which only type in dots, hyphens and spaces based on time delays.

How we built it

We built it using :

  • CircuitPython (Seeeduino Xiao)
  • HTML (For structure)
  • CSS (For beautification)
  • Javascript (Revealing message and translation of morse code)
  • Nicepage (Website Builder)

The circuit is made using Seeeduino Xiao which has support for HID (Human Interface Device) and therefore can act as a keyboard. We added two buttons which when presssed send the keystrokes for dots/hyphens or spaces. A buzzer has also been added which signals the audio for the characters.

Challenges we ran into

The main challange we faced was using javascript as it has many facets when using it with HTML, adding time delays in javascript. The structure of the website built using Nicepage was a challange as Nicepage was a completely new software and we had started developing from scratch so we had to learn the functionality of the software. While building a board using circuit python we initially used one button but with the time delays, the typing was very slow so we had to add an additional button.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of adding more than one functionality in our project as it not only works as a time capsule but also a morse code translator. We also learned a new website building tools which makes our frontend development much faster. The most important accomplishment is that we were able to complete this project end to end during the weekend itself.

What we learned

  • We learned a new website builder software
  • We learned how to effectively use javascript variables
  • We learned how to manage time delays in python
  • We learned time management and team work

What's next for Time Capsule

Time capsule could have additional features while the user waits for the timeout on the message. It could have a movie guessing game and a music library which shuffles all songs of the 2000 decade. The overall website can be changed in such a way that it randomly uses the theme of a particular decade from 1500s to 2010s and each time the user loads the website a different decade can be experienced.

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