Personal Companion Cube - Arduino and Raspberry Pi Compatible

Made on a Glowforge
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Many of the Raspberry Pi / Arduino enclosures out there are amazing and beautifully made, but most of them aren’t self sufficient. You may need an external battery, solder some buttons on a prototyping board, a screen for displaying whatever data you desire, get a fan for cooling if you’re fancy (you fancy, huh?), possibly an on/off switch, etc. By the time you’re done, you’ve got a huge mess of wires / stuff.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present:

My Personal Companion Cube!

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Sides: Front, Left, Top

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Sides: Top, Right, Back

Work in progress, but just though I’d throw out some inspiration (first day using the GF - yay!). :smile:

2.5" cube, with lots of space inside to put whatever you want.

This one has: Fan, 2x momentary buttons, giant On/Off switch, OLED screen, 1000mAh battery (upgradable since there’s still room in there!) internal speaker (not shown).
Features: ESP32, arduino and (micro)Python compatible, and a few other unnamed features.

Future changes: another few holes for air circulation, and possibly more button,

Photos only show 5 sides, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination to how the 6th side looks like :wink:
(hint - what else do you need to make this box truly functional?)

What would you add to any of the sides to make it yours? Comment below.

Nick
What will you create next?

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Haha—very cute! Not having any skills regarding Raspberry pies (sic) I think I’d use the sixth side for instructions.:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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It is nothing (but awesome!) without Bluetooth

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ESPs have WiFi, so I’d say it’s definitely not nothing. Cool project!

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USB port?

Very nice!

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Chuckle! What @cynd11 said! Very cool! :smile:

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Fantastic. That’ would be a fun thing to play around with…almost like a fidget. But, what?..no flashing RGB lights?

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You deserve a piece of cake! So tasty & moist.
(Yes, that’s where my mind goes when I hear companion cube–thanks to Valve games…).

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Thanks! YAY you got the reference!

“The :cake: is a liel!” :wink:

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Have you ever noticed how the Home Depot sign “icons” must have been made by someone who loved the games, too?

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Ah, now that you mention it, I see the resemblance…

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Not finding it via web, but there’s one of a figure holding a package (used for pick up orders). Very much like the companion cube icon, minus the heart! (Maybe Valve IP attorneys noted too much similarity & had them stop using?..).

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The newer Raspberry Pi’s (like the Pi Zero W) have WiFi and Bluetooth built in!

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I’ve been thinking about diving into ESP32 for the next level of control. Wanting to make a cost effective module for blinky lights projects . Good inspiration.

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Esp32 blinky light control with 5v rgb led systems like the ws2812* series and its many clones will require a good level shifting solution (the esp operates at 3.3v, the lights need a solid 5 to work reliably). The fastled.io forums have a ton of information on the subject if you’re so inclined.

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Thanks for the info. Yes, the power requirements of the different components and managing on my own is fairly beyond me rudimentary skills. I’ve been reading and watching YouTubes for the past four months on these types of projects. Still more to go.

Yes set up last night a new Raspberry Pi 3+B for an Octoprint installation that I’m giving to someone for the 3D printer. It’s great to have an ecosystem that is almost plug and play, other than fiddling with editing the wifi config text. But then I want to get lighting that I can control with the RPi and it gets complicated. So many fun projects to do.

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I’ll take it to dm, the details on this are a bit off topic :slight_smile:

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I was taking it that we were going to discuss how we would use this.

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That’s fair but the nerdy details of level shifters are a bit specific. :slight_smile:

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Yes. You are right! But sometimes when folks post some specific things from their own expertise, I have :thinking:learned so much. Hard to say when to go down the rabbit hole or not.

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