Love Gauge

by lighttamer in Circuits > Microcontrollers

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Love Gauge

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I'm working together with my wife. But sometimes one of us has an external appointment.
So, if one of us is thinking about the other, we want to show it together.

For this, I have made an Love Gauge for us.

It stands on our desktop, or you can carry it somewhere else, cause it has an WLAN module.

If one of us thinking of the other, you can open the website and move the pointer to an message. The pointer of the Love Gauge on the desktop is moving to the message, and you know the other is thinking of you.

If you want to build it you need an internetserver, an servo and an arduino with network shield. I used an reaDIYmate board with WLAN.

Design

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I have made an sketch with CorelDraw for the wooden parts and the background for the remote control program.

We have engrave and cut the wooden parts with an laser.

Fix the Servo

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Now you put the servo inside the scale. It is an small cheap servo, cause the pointer is very light.
I fixed it with an sticky tape and two screws.

Fix the Pointer

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First you need to set the servo with an computer to 90° and switch it of.

The diameter of the hole in the pointer is so small that you don't need an screw to fix it. You can just press it on in the vertical position.

Bottom Plate

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Now you can put the scale and the front cover in the bottom plate.

The display of the Love Gauge is finished.

Connect With the Arduino

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The servo is now plugged into the ReaDIYmate board. It has an connectors for the servo, no need to solder.

Software

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The software has three parts for the data exchange.
  1. On the Internetserver is an PHP program working. It get the pointer position and saved it.
     
  2. An javascipt program for the remote control. It used an canvas HTML5 opject. So it works on most browsers and also on smartphones. Here you can set the pointer, and the program send the position to the server.
     
  3. An C program on the reaDIYmate board. It get the pointer position from the internet server and set the servo to that position.

That are the three programs
http://liebesbarometer.zweizelgaenger.de/zeigersetzen.php.html
http://liebesbarometer.zweizelgaenger.de/readymate_zeiger.pde.html
http://liebesbarometer.zweizelgaenger.de/zweizelgaenger_de.ino.html

Try It

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Now you can open the remote control website. Here you can try it: http://liebesbarometer.zweizelgaenger.de/

Hope you enjoy it, and translate it to your language.

Greetings from Germany
Ruth and Thomas