/SpaceScanner

A temperature and humidity sensor toy for small humans.

Primary LanguageCGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

The Space Scanner

Q1) Wotzit?

A1) A temperature and humidity sensor toy for small humans. My small human is in a space phase. Last birthday they got a space suit with helmet costume ($25 on Amazon!) and a rocket-ship play tent (Also concerningly inexpensive!). But, as any parental units doomed to watch space-themed childrens programming ad nauseam knows, you can't explore space without a "scanner!"

Q2) Requirements?

A2) Must hold the attention of a small child. Preferably across multiple minutes.

  • Brightly colored buttons. Adults should want to push them.

  • Highly visible display, should support animations.

  • Must at a minimum beep and boop.

  • Do something "real," sensor-wise.

  • Fit in one of these project boxes I accidentally ordered way too many of.

  • Battery powered, charge via USB.

Q3) What's the BOM looking like?

  • I don't know, let's see what my parts box is looking like!

  • Elegoo Nano. ATMega328p, 16mHz, 2k SRAM, 32k flash. Good 'nuff!

  • Sparkfun SparkX Qwiic Alphanumeric Display. 14-segment, single decimal point. No idea what I got these for but they're pretty!

  • 12mm mushroom looking buttons. Red, yellow, green. Not the highest quality but satisfying to push.

  • A lazily calculated low-pass filter.

  • Adafruit 2.5W Class D amp. PAM8302A.

  • 13mm surface transducer.

  • 2200uF big-arse decoupling capacitor; both the amp and 14-segment can droop the voltage.

Q4) Demo!

A4) IMAGE ALT TEXT HERE