DIY a Sweet Gift for Your Parents

I have my own baby 2 years ago. I was thought that it's easy to be a parent when I was young. But, you know, when you get a baby, you will never have the same feeling.

I am far from my parent when I was at college. Sometimes they will call and ask, "How are you doing, my boy".

I know that they love me and miss me.

The Chinese New Year is coming soon, I am going make a present for them.

It's a "How you doing monitor". That is a funny way to tell your parent what you are doing recently, such as climbing, riding, drinking and so on. "Old man, look, our son is dating a girl", when the Date logo move on.

There are 8 icons means 8 different status. and there's button on the middle, push it to make a phone call to a set number.

Please view the cover image to get more.

Step 1: What Do You Need

• Xadow GSM + BLE
• Xadow GSM Breakout
• Xadow Duino
• WS2812B LED

• 3mm Black Acrylic
• 3mm Wooden Board
• A Sim card

Step 2: Cut the Acrylic and Wooden Board

You will need some black 3mm acrylic and 3mm wooden board here.

And the most important, you need a laser cutter, I bet you won't have one at home, try to find one at a maker space nearby.

Download the 2D file, and cut it, you will get several parts, as shown at the above image.

Step 3: Hardware Connection

Here we connect all the electronic modules.

Actually there's very few thing to do in this steps, because of the convenient way to connection of RePhone.

Step 4: Software Works

If it's your first time to use RePhone, put hand on wiki for RePhone for details manual.

RePhone support Arduino IDE and Eclipse for develop. So if you ever used Arduino, it's easy for you as well.

Here we use Arduino IDE. Download the code attached and upload it into RePhone, Then it's done.

Step 5: Fitting

Here we will fit all acrylic and wooden board together.

You will need glue gun here to connect things.

There's a detail steps shown at the above image. Please view click the image to get more details.

Step 6: The Android App

We designed an Android app to send the message.

Download the apk file attached and install to your Android phone.

It's pity that there's no iOS version yet, cu'z I don't quite familiar with iOS development.

Maybe I will make one someday when my friend (who know how to make it) is available.

Step 7: Test It

Open your Android phone and click ... on the top right corner to set a number.

Then you could tell you mom what you are doing via click a button.

Let's go climbing? Then your parents can see it.

And your parents can make you a phone call as well, just click the middle button, click again to hung up.

I bet your parents will like it.

Cheers.