Feeling bored and need something to jumpstart the creative engine?

Sometimes the desire to create just needs a spark – some sort of seed to grow from. This quick, solder-free project turns your Adafruit CLUE into a randomized project generator. It's simple to use and easy to customize by adding your own activities & subjects.

This project takes inspiration from Oblique Strategies, but updates the idea for flexibility and more of an all-ages appeal.

What you'll need

In addition to a computer, you'll need an Adafruit CLUE, USB cable. You can also use a battery to make your CLUE portable.

Optional

What you'll need to do

To get things up & running, this guide will show you how to:

1. Install CircuitPython on CLUE
2. Install necessary code libraries on CLUE
3. Upload project code

Let's get started!

Now that CircuitPython & libraries are installed on your CLUE, all you need is the project code.

Installing Project Code

To use with CircuitPython, you need to first install a few libraries, into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. Then you need to update code.py with the example script.

Thankfully, we can do this in one go. In the example below, click the Download Project Bundle button below to download the necessary libraries and the code.py file in a zip file. Extract the contents of the zip file, open the directory Activity_Generator/ and then click on the directory that matches the version of CircuitPython you're using and copy the contents of that directory to your CIRCUITPY drive.

Your CIRCUITPY drive should now look similar to the following image:

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020 Collin Cunningham for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
#
"""ACTIVITY GENERATOR for Adafruit CLUE"""

import time
import random
from adafruit_clue import clue
from things import activities
from things import subjects

screen = clue.simple_text_display(text_scale=4, colors=(clue.WHITE,))

screen[1].text = "ACTIVITY"
screen[2].text = "GENERATOR"
screen.show()
time.sleep(1.5)

screen[0].text = "make a"
screen[2].text = "about"
screen[1].color = clue.RED
screen[3].color = clue.GREEN
screen[4].color = clue.BLUE

activity = "???"
subject_a = "???"
subject_b = "???"
two_subjects = True

def random_pick(items):
    index = random.randint(0, len(items)-1)
    return items[index]

while True:

    if clue.button_a:
        activity = random_pick(activities)
        subject_a = random_pick(subjects)
        subject_b = random_pick(subjects)
        time.sleep(0.25)
    if clue.button_b:
        two_subjects = not two_subjects
        time.sleep(0.5)

    screen[1].text = activity
    screen[3].text = subject_a

    if two_subjects:
        screen[4].text = subject_b
    else:
        screen[4].text = ""

    screen.show()

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020 Collin Cunningham for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
#
"""ACTIVITY GENERATOR for Adafruit CLUE"""

import time
import random
from adafruit_clue import clue
from things import activities
from things import subjects

screen = clue.simple_text_display(text_scale=4, colors=(clue.WHITE,))

screen[1].text = "ACTIVITY"
screen[2].text = "GENERATOR"
screen.show()
time.sleep(1.5)

screen[0].text = "make a"
screen[2].text = "about"
screen[1].color = clue.RED
screen[3].color = clue.GREEN
screen[4].color = clue.BLUE

activity = "???"
subject_a = "???"
subject_b = "???"
two_subjects = True

def random_pick(items):
    index = random.randint(0, len(items)-1)
    return items[index]

while True:

    if clue.button_a:
        activity = random_pick(activities)
        subject_a = random_pick(subjects)
        subject_b = random_pick(subjects)
        time.sleep(0.25)
    if clue.button_b:
        two_subjects = not two_subjects
        time.sleep(0.5)

    screen[1].text = activity
    screen[3].text = subject_a

    if two_subjects:
        screen[4].text = subject_b
    else:
        screen[4].text = ""

    screen.show()

After booting up, press the A button to generate a new project idea.

If you'd like simpler suggestions, press the B button to remove the second item from the proposed subject.

Generally, the generated project ideas work best as starting points or suggestions. For example: "make a VIDEO about METAL SINGING" could be a video about a heavy metal band, or someone playing the saw, or a crooning fork, etc. 

Customize it

You can easily add or remove words used by the generator by editing a single file.

For editing the CircuitPython code, we recommend using the Mu editor. Info for downloading and installing Mu can be found here.

Connect CLUE to your computer and open the CIRCUITPY drive.

Open the file named things.py in the Mu editor.

You can delete or add items to the list, just remember to:

• Indent each item with four spaces
• Enclose each item in quotation marks
• Follow each item with a single comma
• Each item must have a length of 8 characters or less