Notification Cube

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  Physical prototype

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  Simulation link(first layer): https://www.tinkercad.com/things/7RKrakVsQ59

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  Schematic

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  Web page

Inspiration

We wish to make a more visible and animated notifyer.

What it does

It would detect if one receives an email, and it would respond with a visual animation on the LED cube to notify that the user has received an email.

How we built it

For the hardware component, we used an Arduino with 27 red LEDs, nine 220Ω resistors. For the software component, we created a web interface using python and the Flask framework to get the user's Gmail username and password. Then we used the python's time and imaplib library to connect to the user's Gmail. Finally, to connect the python code to the Arduino we used the python serial library.

Challenges we ran into

For the hardware component, we had to continuously reengineer the cube, this included soldering and re-soldering the LEDs together and solder extension wires to each led when we found out the legs were not big enough. For the software component, we had to figure out how to use python to connect to Gmail, how to send signals from python to the Arduino, and fix errors that occurred when creating the web interface.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud that it works. :)

What I learned

We learned how to use python to connect to Gmail, and how to send signals from python to the Arduino.

What's next for Notification Cube

For the hardware component, we would like to use RGB LEDs in place of the red LEDs and then make the cube bigger by using more LEDs (the next iteration would be a 4 by 4 cube). For the software component, we would like to add more applications (i.e. Outlook, Yahoo etc.), we would like to update the web interface, and we would like to add additional letters/animations to the Arduino.

Built With

• arduino
• bootstrap
• css3
• flask
• html5
• imaplib
• python
• serial
• time