Ideas

• Keyboard Tray
• Making a custom speaker setup
• Personal stream deck
• Boxing dummy alarm clock
• Phone automator
• osu! player?
• Hangboard/Moonboard

My original idea for the final project was to build a custom attachment for my standing desk. I wanted to make something that would let me use the ergonomic keyboard that I liked, while simultaneously not cluttering up my desk and complementing my current workflow.

More can be seen in my week one post.

Making a smart hangboard

A hobby that I have been really getting into lately is bouldering, so I want to make something related to climbing.

One thing that I always found really cool is a Moonboard, which is essentially a programmable wall with a grid of many holds. Millions of problems can be made on that board by setting which holds light up.

I originally wanted to make my own cheaper version of a Moonboard so I can practice in my own room, but I realized that my room is much too small for a Moonboard, and I mostly just want to make something to practice on outside of the climbing gyms. Something closer to a hangboard?

Anthony told me that a previous student, Alejandro Diaz made a climbing wall for his project. I will be using some of his project notes for guidance. I don’t have the same amount of space as he did, so I won’t be building something as large as his.

A Smart Hangboard

For the reasons above, I want to make a smart hangboard. And I want it to have a few features:

1. interchangable holds: I can switch out holds to practice on easily
2. multiple levels: so I can practice reaching upwards for holds
3. footholds: maybe another separate piece to put footholds on

A goal feature would be a way to gamify the board, e.g. holds would light up and you have to position your body in a way to touch all of the holds simultaneously.

Update 11/28

My current plan is to have the hangboard look like an upside down T-shape, with holds to the side and higher in the middle. I feel like a design like this will let me practice most moves: going up, down, sideways, and diagonally. I can practice a lot of campusing type moves, as well as just statically hold onto it.

My current plan is to have 21 holds, each with its own capacitive sensors. After consulting with Anthony, I decided that I would use 3 xiao ESP32S3 boards, for a couple reasons: first, they have significantly more analog pins than the ESP32C3 or RP2040’s, and they also have better quality analog sensors than the RP2040 (according to Anthony).

These devices would all be on a single board, and would talk to each other via I2C. I also broke out an I2C header for a display, if I wanted to also have a display.