“Via the gift card’s Android application, adjust its RGB eye color and display weather and air quality information on the ST7789.
Story
Although it is struggling for me to create a brand-new design while paying homage to the classic Christmas theme, I decided to design this gift card in the hope of making it remain functional and stylish even to the following Christmas Eve while emanating the joyous reminiscences of Christmas. To make this gift card behave more than a redolent Christmas ornament, I designed it as a fully functional remote home automation interface for detecting weather and air quality information. It has six different modes (screens) controlled by its collaborating Android application as follows:
Temperature
Humidity
Pressure and Altitude
Air Quality
Animation
Home Screen (Happy New Year)
First of all, I developed an Android application named Gift Card to control the gift card’s modes and features via Bluetooth. And, therefore, I added an HC-06 Bluetooth Module to the gift card.
To be able to obtain weather information accurately, I used a BMP180 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude Sensor and a DHT11 Temperature/Humidity Sensor.
Then, to detect the air quality, I used an MQ-135 Air Quality Sensor with large-scale detecting scope and high sensitivity - NH3, NOx, alcohol, Benzene, smoke, CO2, etc.
Finally, I included an ST7789 240x240 IPS Screen to display each screen (mode) with colorful images and texts. Also, I added an RGB LED to the gift card as the eye of the snowman.
After completing my design on a breadboard and testing the code with the Android application, I designed a PCB (Snowman Gift Card) with a unique snowman shape to create an intriguing and apt gift card design for Christmas :)
I tried to keep components as simple as possible to integrate into the board to make this gift card easy-to-use even for novices and beginners who receive it as a gift for Christmas :)”