Is there a button sensor that will work with breakout board / miniUSB?

Mike Kijewski

I'd like to create a button (like the staples easy button) that my dog can push when she needs to go out. I'd like the button push to trigger an SMS or HTTP request. Can this be done with the mag switch, or is there another piece of hardware that might work?

Sean McPherson

The breakout board has 3.3V (unused ATM, until analog signaling is built into code in an upcoming update) plus a pair of pins for a circuit (NO/NC). You can take any Normally Open or Normally Closed switch and put it inline between those 2 pins, and the change of state will trigger the twine as you wanted.

Here's an example of one of many that'd work, depending on how you want to mount it and how hard your pet is gonna work thwap it

http://www.magneticlocks.net/proddetail.asp?prod=MAG-1010

Nothing that fancy is needed, tho; you could just take 2 pieces of wood/plastic (cheap dollar store cutting boards work great for this kind of bulk hack and slash job when you don't want wood splinters or metal shavings and don't have a source for fancy materials) with a bent metal spring wire on each end keeping them apart (or even just regular wound springs, again, depending on size of the dog/amount of force/intended orientation) and put a cheap radio-shack-type momentary pushbutton switch in the middle under the top plate with some bumpers around it to protect it from overzealous thwappage. Wire the 2 contacts on the momentary switch to the breakout board and you're done. Anytime the top plate is shoved down, the momentary will show the circuit as open or closed (depending on what you use). You'll just have to make sure the sensor 'trips' long enough in your rule to trigger but my twine's been pretty good about detecting fast-ish events pretty quickly and reliably so far in a day of testing.

Dress is up the final install however you want to match the real location! I can see a doggie dish making the perfect base for one of these buttons.

Sean