Inspired by the Weasley family clock in the Harry Potter series; Paper Signals (Isaac Blankensmith, Glenn Cochon, Matthew Carey, Smooth Technology, and Kelly Ann Lum) — as well as certain artfully constructed metallic and magnetic status boards in the basements of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall — I wanted to make a simple deskside device that I could use daily, integrating a servo's movement and Particle cloud functions.
Originally I had wanted to play with the tradition of European medieval manuscript marginalia and the figure of the manicule —but then realized setting up a rig would likely be overpowering/overengineered. While the wireup was generally free of troubles, I initially ran into some issues programming, as I had forgotten — briefly — that the servo.write() function takes in resultant angles, rather than differences in angular rotation. Code is as follows.
Ye Olde Status Clokke is working! But due to the microservo’s 180˚ range of motion, I can never set it to “away” or “out” — using a DC motor may have avoided this altogether... but folks don't need to know :') Another way I post-rationalized this was the fact that if I were physically absent from/at my desk, that's enough of a sign that I’m out/away... By using the fake delay to simulate a period of time passing, I was able to bring this device to semi-imaginable realms. Ideally, personally the availability updates would be triggered by a physical switch, rather than typing on my computer into the Particle cloud — since the former feels more like a definitive shift into a new state/activity.
I’d probably build a more elaborate cardboard encasing for the electronics, stick the clock face to a harder card stock or thin (ply?-)wood, and explore the aforementioned physical switch input integrations — which would presumably be perceivable as events in Particle cloud.
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