Feb 16
I realized I should look at what other makers make so I joined few sites that have them congregating. They all have design contests that are themed so I entered those. This post will follow my progress on that contest. The contest is to design something around the NXT prototyping kit. I only have 10 days to complete it. Registration opened back in October. Evidently, NXT gave away 250 of those devices to contest entrants but I joined the fray way to late so I had to order mine with my own monies.
Have a look at the contest page here:
https://www.hackster.io/contests/rapid-iot?reg_modal=true#challengeNav
I ordered mine and it set me back 61 units of currency. I only have to until the 28th to make something happen with this dealie:
Feb18
I got an email from NXT saying my item is scheduled to ship on the 20th? So it took 2 days to let me know it was not going to ship for another 2 days? There is only 10 days left in the contest so I'm displeased. Fortunately I learn quickly and already have a solid idea to pursue when it finally gets here. I set an email asking if they can speed it along.
Feb19
In the design phase of my this contest, I have made advancement. I have received an email saying that my device will be shipped out today. Behold my prowess.
FedEx tells me I should have it on Friday.
Feb28
The day of the contest and I have given up. I received my device on Friday and have spent hours upon hours trying to get it to work the way I wanted it to. I don't know what I have been missing but I could not get the BLE Gatt Characteristic to function properly- even with provided examples! As in, I opened the project included with my account and couldn't get it to work. I know the device works because the demo project works. I was even able to open the demo included in the example sections and have it work. So that one worked while others didn't.
It wasn't like I didn't try either. You can see by the highlighted files, I made almost 60 attempts to get this thing working:
It was only that one hurdle I couldn't get over. I was able to get their app to talk to and trigger my ESP8266 so if I could have gotten their device to talk to their app then I would have been all set.
I was very sad for my failure and suffered a day of depression from it. Time to move on.
Fortunately, I had entered another contest and the actualization of that one went well.
Sadface. Call the wambulance.