ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:33 pm #50013 Hello ESP8266 Community I am Kenton Vizdos a 13 year old Maker. I am currently working on a project for my grandma using a raspberry pi. What it is is two buttons, one says I am OK, and another says I need help ASAP. The two things I have gotten stumped on: How should I power this? (Note that there is no visuals, just a button and a constantly listening program listening for the button click. Second: How should I go about creating a case? I know super duper basic 3D modeling skills, but I am not sure how to go about getting it all into a reasonable, portable size. I also do NOT want a power off/on button on the case because that could cause problems. I also have no clue on how to create the size for the buttons, because I am not sure if I need it to be perfect or what. That is pretty much all I am asking at the moment. What I would like, is to use an ESP8266 and Somesort of Arduino, if anyone can help that would be great! Thanks for the help

- Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:41 pm #50045 Firstly, this is a great idea and it's good to hear you are doing this to help your grandmother.

I don't think there is any point using an Arduino for this at all. The ESP8266 has a fairly powerful microprocessor in it and it's perfectly capable of doing this without an Arduino. Not only will that simplify the whole design, it will make it much smaller.

You are right not to include a power button because this is something you don't want to be turned off by accident. I also think you should only have one large button to avoid the risk that she might press the wrong button. If she were to fall and hit her head for example, she might be confused and press the wrong button.

The ESP8266 draws quite a high current when it's connected to wifi so you want this device to be in deep sleep mode most of the time. It should wake up when the button is pressed, connect to wifi and then communicate somehow with someone who can help. Twitter would probably be a simple way to do that so you want to use a web service like IFTT to send a tweet when the button wakes the device up.

If the device is in deep sleep mode most of the time, it could run on two AA batteries for a very long time. You want it to wake up occasionally just to check that it's working. Depending on how frail your grandmother is, you may only want it to alert to let you know something is wrong and just to communicate that it's still working.

If she is very frail, you may want her to communicate more regularly. You could still do this by making it beep every few hours, lighting a green LED and explaining to her to press the button when this happens to confirm she is OK.

Decide how you want it to work and how it will best fit your grandmother's needs, then I'm sure people here will be very happy to help to put it together.

- Fri Jul 01, 2016 5:13 pm #50055 Hi, +1 on lotus49 comments.
This sounds like a really good project. Whilst the link below doesn’t exactly do what you want it might be worth a look as the PIR could be replaced with a momentary push button (or buttons). This however should not be relied on in a life threatening situation. As a project for reassurance I would be happy to help if I can.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4458&hilit=pir

- Fri Jul 01, 2016 5:51 pm #50056 Thanks for all of the help guys! I am liking lotus' idea of having just one button, with maybe a RGB LED to say either Button pressed (green) or Please press the button (red) and then using a beeper to either say Press the button to say your OK, or to give feedback that you have pressed the button. One question: Should I use this ESP8226 https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471? ... oCPQLw_wcB or https://www.adafruit.com/products/2491? ... oC8Wrw_wcB thanks for all the help, and I will probably need help when I get to the connecting stage (I would like to solder)