Time Tracking Tasks 

It's difficult to remember exactly what time you started work on a project, and when you stopped. Tasks like taking out the dog and brewing a fresh pot of coffee to keep you focused do not count towards your project's "total hours".

Automate Time-Sheets

You can use Microsoft Excel to track your data using a time-sheet, but manually inputting times and tasks also becomes a task. We're going to build a different way to track your - using a flippable cube. 

 

 

New task? Flip it over.Taking a break? Flip it over. Finished with work for the day? Flip it it over!

We'll be connecting the Time Tracking Cube to Adafruit IO to collect metadata about when the cube was flipped and its orientation.

We're also going to create a Zapier Zap to periodically collect data from this feed and send it to a timesheet we create on Google Sheets. 

Adafruit Feather Platform

The Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 is an all in one WiFi dev board with built in USB and battery charging. The Adafruit Feather format is easy to use gives you tons of add-ons. The Prop-Maker Wing adds NeoPixel support and sound effects.

Parts

You'll need the following parts to complete this guide.

The ESP8266 is simple to set up and supported by the Adafruit IO Arduino library.

Angled shot of rectangular microcontroller.
Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake, it is thin, light, and lets you fly! We designed Feather to be a new standard for portable microcontroller...
$14.95
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The Prop-Maker FeatherWing has lots of options for building either props, or desk-toys. We'll use one feature of the FeatherWing - the LIS3DH Accelerometer. This sensor is perfect for detecting when the cube is tilted in different orientations on the desk. 

Angled shot of a Adafruit Prop-Maker FeatherWing.
The Adafruit Feather series gives you lots of options for a small, portable, rechargeable microcontroller board. Perfect for fitting into your next prop build! This FeatherWing will...
Out of Stock

We'll also use a small Piezo Buzzer to let us know if the cube was tilted, without checking Adafruit IO or the Serial Monitor.

Bread-board friendly Piezo Buzzer
Piezo buzzers are used for making beeps, tones and alerts. This one is petite but loud! Drive it with 3-30V peak-to-peak square wave. To use, connect one pin to ground (either one) and...
$1.50
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1 x 8x NeoPixel Stick
5050 RGB LED NeoPixels
1 x Feather Female Headers Kit
12-pin and 16-pin short female headers
1 x Feather Male Headers Kit
12-pin and 16-pin male headers
1 x 3-Pin JST PH Cable
3-pin JST-PH cable

Materials

Tools

To build your Time Tracking Cube, you'll need access to the following tools. Don't have something listed? Pick it up from the Adafruit shop.

1 x 3D Printer
Ultimaker 2+ 3D Printer
6 x M2.5 x 8mm metric machine screws
M2.5 x 8mm flat head metric screws

This guide was first published on Jan 14, 2019. It was last updated on Mar 19, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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