At TI, we celebrate the makers and hobbyists who enjoy creating and innovating on their own time. In our ongoing DIY with TI series, we share their incredible Do It Yourself inventions using TI technology.
As TIer Uri Weinrib can attest, having a child brings so many new joys – and a few trifling frustrations – to life. Like when the store-bought mobile hanging over the baby’s crib stops after every song.
When Uri and his wife brought home their first child – a healthy little boy – they quickly learned that having to go in his room and turn on the mobile after every song was upsetting the baby because when he would see them, he would cry.
“He wants the music playing as he falls asleep. But the mobile plays just one song, and then you have to press the button again. So every time, I would have to stop what I was doing, go into his room and press the button again,” said Uri, a systems architect in wireless connectivity. “He would see me and burst into tears.”
This little frustration turned into inspiration: What if there was a way to control the mobile wirelessly from a website?
Around that time, we released the SimpleLink™ Wi-Fi® CC3200 single-chip wireless microcontroller (MCU). The device integrates an MCU with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing Uri to write code for the CC3200 Internet-on-a-chip™ device attached to the mobile to fully control the device from a smartphone or tablet.
But he didn’t stop there. The mobile came with four predefined songs. So, Uri added the capability to pick which song played, added more songs to the playlist and created a piano interface so he could edit or replace the songs, as his son got older. Uri attached a light sensor to the SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200 wireless MCU, enabling the light to automatically come on when the room was dark and even made it possible to change the mobile’s turning speed.
The project took Uri less than four months to complete during the rare free moments between juggling work and being a new dad. However, by the time the mobile was fully operational, Uri ran into another problem.
“My kid was too big for it,” he said with a chuckle.
“They said, ‘Wow, this kind of creativity would be great in the next stage of the toy industry. We want to move in this direction,” Uri said.
He’s now working with one company to integrate his creation into a technologically advanced children’s mobile for next year’s models – all because of one little fatherhood frustration.