Useless Box PRO with ESP8266 and Gesture Sensor

thingiverse

This is a remix of the great project by György Balássy: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3856965 And now you can have your own Useless Box PRO! That's right, this box is a pro at being useless. Why PRO? - the new design has a frame and outer shell, which makes it easy to (dis)assemble. No glue*! - there is a Li-ion battery and charger - the charger gives a % indication about the charge level of the battery when you press a small button - there is an on/off button at the back to spare the battery when the box is not in use - with my fork of the code the actions come up in a random order, instead of always in the same sequence Video of the box in action: https://youtu.be/pbKYvEeUfwA (*) Note: if you look closely you can see that is some double-sided tape (the horror!) in my build to hold the sensor in place. That's because the screw-holes I added on the inside of the box broke off. The Halo filament that I used isn't the strongest, and I didn't want to go to a higher temperature for better layer-adhesion in order to avoid stringing. I have since adjusted the design to give the screw-notches a larger area, so if all goes to plan you can use a few small self-tapping screws here. The hinge is made from a short bit of filament, which is then melted to the outer box to keep it in place. I used a soldering iron for this. Instead of making a PCB I just 'air-wired' the connections on the shield board. The design is simply made by tracing the connections from the Wemo to the breakout-pins. The circuit diagram is in the list of photos (update March 2nd 2023: I found it again, yay!): this is as seen from the TOP. I made some small changes in the project source code and committed these to this forked repository: https://github.com/lexvandersluijs/useless-box-pro IMPORTANT NOTE 1: there are two solder-islands on the proximity sensor marked PS, for Power Supply. On the sensor I got these were not connected yet, but they should be! Just use a small amount of solder to bridge the two islands. If you don't do this the device does not receive power, since it then expects power over the separate power connection, but this pin is not connected (see the original schematic on the GitHub page). IMPORTANT NOTE 2: you need to install a Boards Manager for esp8366 in your development environment (I used Arduino IDE). Initially I tried the latest version, but everything was moving very slowly then and changing the servo speed settings did not change that. But if you use an older version, between 2.4.1 and 2.6 (didn't test further), everything works as planned. My hypothesis, not fully checked, is that this is because the newer version has a more thorough implementation of the Serial monitor interface, and the code is emitting messages all the time. The old version just fires off the message and forgets about it (and nothing appears in the serial monitor unless you explicitly give it time to send), which is faster. Parts: - the same parts as in the original project, plus the following - instead of a custom PCB, I cut one board off this triple version: https://www.reichelt.nl/nl/nl/d1-shield-tripple-base-d1z-tripple-base-p266084.html - a 5-pin connector for 2.54 mm pin-distance, to connect the sensor, such as this one https://www.soldeerbout-shop.nl/pcb-connectoren/2980-printconnector-vrouwelijk-5-contacten-20cm-5410329240424.html - this switch with a long lever such as this one: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005004367116021.html - item "Long 6Pins ON ON". I used one with a round lever, might be recommended if you can find it, since it would better match with the recess in the 'finger' that toggles the switch. - round on/off switch: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4000169106856.html - a flat Li-ion battery (3.7V, 1000 to 2000 mAh) - a charge controller: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001132144039.html - some pin-headers like these: https://www.reichelt.nl/nl/nl/pin-headers-2-54-mm-1x20-recht-mpe-087-1-020-p119888.html - four short M2 screws with nuts to attach the servos - a few tie-wraps - two small self-tapping screws to hold the sensor in place. - a short USB-A to USB-C cable (I used the Wemos D1 Mini V4) - four 6 mm button-head M3 screws to fix the frame to the box - four M3 5x5 screw inserts, to be melted into the holes in the bottom of the box, using a soldering iron - a tiny amount of black paint to make the inside of the sensor hole black. You may not need this if you use a darker / less reflective filament than I did.