Week 8 – Unusual Switch – Wi-Fi switch

Preface: I realize that my idea ended up being more of a tech demo than a cool idea. Sorry!

Concept

My project was inspired off this tweet I saw. They were using a Wemos D1 Mini microchip which has a Wi-Fi module on it and can act as an access point ( other devices can connect to it ), and using the Wi-Fi capture portal to display a message/article/book/image/video ( up to 4MB ) to anyone who connects to it. I thought it was fascinating so I ordered the chip from Amazon and was playing with it, when I thought I could rig it up to the Arduino and use it as an unusual switch.

It ended up being more of a technical exploration than a artistic exploration, as I found that using microchips outside of the Arduino UNO we were provided was a little more challenging as not everything is available out of the box.

Implementation

Video Demo

My implementation was pretty simple — when you connect to the network, it will toggle the state of the LED between on and off, and the webpage that you see reflects that. There could have been more interesting applications of the switch, for example adding a Wi-Fi password so that the switch is only usable by certain users, or adding some HTML inputs to the webpage so that the LED is controllable from the webpage without having to disconnect/reconnect. Even if you’re in a receptionless area, this switch will still work ( as the chip is hosting it’s own Wi-Fi network, you do not need a network connection to use it ).

Reflections

Will try to do less tech-demo-ey projects for my future physical computing projects sorry!!!