Writing for Makezine, Tom Piluti says he often slaps post-it notes on the office door to alert co-workers of his whereabouts.
Unfortunately, removing or updating paper post-its notes without physically returning to the office is somewhat of a problem, especially if one is sick or on an extended vacation.
The solution?
Piluti built a remote text message display platform using an Atmel-based Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and a GSM shield.
“Once in the Arduino, the text message is extracted, manipulated a bit, and then displayed scrolling across a 16×2 LCD affixed to my office door,” Piluti explained. “To mount the display on the door, a bracket was made with an [Atmel-powered Makerbot] 3D printer, [with] a cable connecting the Arduino to the LCD.”
Kudos to Piluti, as the electronic post-it substitute is his very first project with an Arduino board.
“It is a combination of getting the GSM side of things to work and programming the message for the LCD,” he adds. “The display bracket was affixed to the door glass with transparent mounting sticky things. There are lots of opportunities to make tweaks to fit your particular needs, especially [in terms of] mounting the display.”
Interested in learning more about how Piluti replaced his physical post-it notes with an Uno-powered text display? You can check out his detailed blog post and sketches in Makezine here.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 