If you work from home, you know about the food problem. Some of us forget to eat, some of us over-snack. This tiny fridge magnet will remind you what your stomach is already telling you — when it’s time to eat, and when you’re probably already full.

Choose when and how many times you want to eat each day, and this kitty will make a hungry face to remind you it’s time. The more you open the fridge between mealtimes, though, the fuller (and more annoyed) it gets. So if you’re not happy that you’re munching on leftover stuffing after already eating three helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes, neither is kitty.

Plus, the fridge kitty is flexible for any kind of eating schedule. You can configure your own ideal snack habits in the firmware, and even have it text you to remind you to eat through IFTTT.

Building your own is easy! Instructions below. If you have questions about the build or are looking for more hacks, find me on Twitter or check out hackpretty.com.

Materials

• Particle Photon
• Microservo (with 3.3 V operating voltage)
• Gyroscope (I used this accelerometer/gyroscope)
• M-F jumper wires
• F-F jumper wires
• Plastic spur gears, 1 ⅛ in diameter
• Screws to fit your spur gears (I used 10mm M2 screws)
• Screws for your servo, these usually come in a bag with your servo
• Screwdriver with attachment for the above, and a small Phillips head attachment for the microservo screws
• Bolts to fit your screws
• Cardboard
• Tape or hot glue
• Magnets (I used ⅛ in tall neodymium magnets with a ½ in diameter)
• This 3D printed enclosure

Build It!

Start printing the enclosure! This will take a while, but in the end you should have these parts:

Set up your photon and check out this code. (For a comprehensive tutorial on using the Photon, check out the Particle Docs.) Read through the firmware and change any settings you need to — namely the settings for time zone and meal times. Then, save and flash the code to your Photon. If it’s your first time working with the Photon, you may be downloading firmware updates for a few minutes.

Line up your kitty’s right eye by threading the screw through the gear, the cat’s right eye hole, and the flat-bottomed offset. Secure it using a bolt on the other side. Make sure it’s loose enough that it can still rotate.

Add F-F wires to your gyro. Attach your gyro to the kitty’s head, inside on the right side.

Press the conical offset onto the top of the servo.

Screw in the servo so that the head of the servo fits in the cat’s left eye.

Attach a gear to the servo and secure it tightly, sandwiching the conical offset in between the servo and the gear. It should be tight enough that it does not spin on its own. Slide it in so that the teeth of the left servo interlock in the free-spinning right servo. The left servo/gear combination will drive the gear on the right side.

Add your Photon. Plug in the servo and gyro to your Photon as follows:

Gyro Photon

VCC 3V3

GND GND

SDA D1

SCL D0

INT D2

Servo Photon

GND GND

PWR VIN

DATA A4

Tuck your Photon and wires into the back of the magnet. Thread the USB cable out of the magnet through the cat’s “legs.” Put a little tape over the Photon to hold it in and protect your fridge from scratches.

Attach the magnets to the magnet impressions using a little hot glue.

Turn it on once to make sure the eyebrows align to the “neutral” position, then tape black paper onto the gears to represent eyebrows.

Stick it on your fridge. Go, kitty, go!

Getting Text Reminders

You can have your kitty email or text you when you need to eat by hooking it up to IFTTT. Set up the Particle channel and select “New Event Published” as your trigger. Find your Photon and make sure you select the kitty’s “meal” event as your trigger. I like to connect it up to SMS for output, but Gmail and other forms of communication are also options! This tutorial shows a very similar process. Make sure you use the “meal” event instead of the “button2” event.

Tracking Your Snack Habits

Every time you open the fridge door outside of meal hours, your Particle device publishes a private event called “snack.” You can track this published event a bunch of ways, but two simple ones are:

Use Librato: Follow this tutorial but with “snack” as your event instead of “temp.”

Make a Google spreadsheet on IFTTT, with the trigger being a Particle published event. You can follow this tutorial, but with “snack” instead of “temperature.”

Last week, we found a way to water our plants by singing to them. This week, we’re focusing inward, and taking care of ourselves with a simple paper-enclosed bot.

This lamp will beep cheerfully to remind you when it’s time to stop and relax. When you pick it up and hold it in your lap, it will pulse at a rate of six breaths per minute to help you regulate your breathing. After five minutes, it turns itself off.

The build process is relaxing in of itself — no soldering, and some fun origami. Instructions are below!

If you have questions about the build or are looking for more hacks, find me on Twitter at @christinesunu or check out hackpretty.com.

Materials

• Particle Internet Button
• Long Micro USB to USB cable
• USB power brick for wall
• 7 x 7 inch origami paper: 12 sheets of white and 6 sheets of green
• A piece of white origami paper, cut to a 3.5 x 3.5-inch square
• A rubberband

Build it!

Set up your Particle Internet Button by opening this code on Particle Build. For more info on getting set up, check out the Particle docs.

Change the `timeZone` variable to your time zone. The time zone is represented by the number of hours offset from UTC. PDT is -7, for example.

Set the `timeToGoOff` variable to the start of the hour at which you would like to be reminded to meditate. Use 24-hour time: 7AM is 7, but 7PM is 19.

Flash the code to your Internet Button!

Make the paper diffuser for your LED lamp. You’ll be folding an origami lotus.

The video has a quick rundown of how to do this, but you can also check out this tutorial for more detailed info. I basically did mine via those instructions, but without any of the yellow paper in the middle.

Put your Internet Button into the center of the lotus and thread the USB cable out of the bottom and to the side. Cover the middle of the button with a small piece of origami paper.

Use it!

The lamp will automatically remind you that it is time to meditate, every day at the time you listed in the firmware.

If you want to start a session sooner, or end a session before your five minutes are up, you can jerk the lamp quickly to the side. This will cause the lamp to start your meditation timer or — if it is currently meditating — return to its sleep state.

Keeping track of your sessions online

You can log your meditation schedule using IFTTT or Librato. The firmware for the lotus publishes two different events. You can track either or both. A “start” event is published at the beginning of your meditation session, and an “end” event is published at the end.

If you’d like to track these on IFTTT, follow this tutorial for logging temperature, but replace the “temperature” event with “start” or “end.”

If you’d like to track these on Librato, follow this tutorial for logging temperature, but replace the “temp” event with “start” or “end.”

You’ve heard the myth that singing to your plants helps them grow better. Unless your singing sounds like a caterpillar chewing, your plant probably isn’t reacting. But serenading your plant could help its growth anyway, since you’re probably paying pretty good attention to your plant’s soil moisture and leaf health while you sing to it.

This mini sprinkler system waters your plant when you sing. So now you can concentrate on your plant’s health and happiness while the watering happens automatically. Plus, you get to perfect your cover of pajama-clad cover of “That’s What I Like.”

Ready to build your own sound-sensitive sprinkler system? Directions below.

Materials

• 3V Aquarium Pump like this one
• Korg CA40 Chromatic Tuner or similarly powered tuner with LED signal lights 
• Particle Photon
• Transistor
• Flexible plastic tubing
• Small clip (to attach tubing to plant)
• Small breadboard
• 5 M-M jumper wires
• Wire stripper
• Soldering iron + solder
• Heat shrink or electrical tape
• Screwdriver of appropriate size for taking apart your tune

How to build it

Take apart your tuner and check it out. On the Korg CA40, there is a solder pad near the center LED that we can take advantage of. This solder pad is part of the trace that brings current to the LED. By hooking it up to the Photon, we should be able to detect and record when the tuner is trying to turn on that light — in other words, when we are singing in tune.

Cut 3 M-M jumper wires in half and strip the exposed ends. Solder the stripped end of one wire to the exposed solder pad. Wrap the exposed end of another wire around the negative terminal of the battery case and solder it, and do the same with another wire on the positive terminal.

Now it’s time to check out your aquarium pump. It’s possible that the ends of the wires here are already the right size to fit into your breadboard, but if you want a more snug or secure connection, this is a good time to extend each wire by soldering on a cut jumper wire. Wrap the exposed soldered spot with electrical tape or slide on some heat shrink to keep these spots from touching each other. Put some plastic tubing on the outflow valve of your aquarium pump and test it to make sure it works.

Set up your Photon and flash this code to your device…

…And wire it all together! Wiring image below.

Drop the aquarium pump into some water (making sure that no exposed wires go in the water) and clip one end of the aquarium tubing to a sturdy part of your plant or to your plant’s pot.

Sing to your plant!