PiClockbot

This project was a fun side project that I made as a gift to my friend. At first, I intended to make a Lovebox replica, but as I was designing it, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself to create something more original. With this in mind, I figured I wanted the gift to have some functionality and improve my friend's life in one way or another. I decided to create a system that would function as a clock, real-time weather forecaster, and (taking inspiration from Lovebox) play a nice animation once a specific keyword message was sent in our Telegram chat. 

Using a spare Raspberry Pi Zero W that I had lying around as the computer for the system, I wrote all of the code in Python, using the Open Weather API and Telethon API to get continuous updates on weather and to asynchronously listen for keywords in our conversation on the Telegram messaging application. All this information would be displayed on a 2.4 inch LCD Display Module connected via SPI to the Raspberry Pi. Once the keyword is detected, the time/weather screen is overridden by the animation. Upon finishing the animation, it returns back to the idle time/weather screen. I used several weather icon widgets to provide useful info on upcoming weather statuses as well. 

As for the chassis, I used the TinyMac 3D housing as a starting point and made edits to the model using Blender. I mainly removed some standoffs, edges, and reduced the screen opening to accommodate my specific LCD screen. 

Overall, I am really proud of the final product as it functions exactly as I envisioned it. Not only was I able to make a unique gift for my girlfriend, I was also able to use my skills that I had accumulated over the years and make a viable, functioning product at the end. 

If you would like to read more about the implementation or look at the code yourself, please see the repository here!