Task Zero

Living in the society that values high efficiency and stresses success, one may tend to forget there is life beside work.

Task Zero is about the task before the first. Task 0: Treasure your personal life. Don’t put off those tasks that cultivate your soul. It’s not about booking a flight, it’s about going home. It’s not about getting the groceries, it’s about cooking it for someone. With this desktop device, I hope to convey to those getting swept away by a fast-paced work life that: the things that might make you smile are those important, not urgent and seemingly mundane tasks.

Instead of an app that’s forever lost in your unresponsive smartphone after 100 automatic updates from your OS, Task Zero is a task management desktop device that counts down the one big personal task you need to complete each day. Similar to the idea of Inbox Zero, the aim of Task Zero is to get your task number down to 0 by the end of the day. If not, a new task will replace the old one and add +1 to your countdown clock.

Step 1: Get Your Materials

You'll need:

• Adafruit 0.54" Quad Alphanumeric FeatherWing Display (LCD for number of tasks)
• Standard LCD 16x2" Character Display (LCD for task name)
• i2c/SPI character LCD backpack
• Breadboard
• Your own casing (I laser-cut acrylic and used felt as the coat on top, but you can 3D print or reuse an old case if you'd prefer)
• The usual electronic bits: wires, solder, heat-shrink tubes and equipments such as a soldering iron, alligator clamps and a heat gun.

You can your electronic parts from Adafruit or Tinkersphere. I live in New York City and my Adafruit orders arrived 2 days later! (That’s pretty fast).

Step 2: Set Up Your Sending and Receiving Task System

Use IFTTT (If This Then That) to set up this system:

• This: Todoist
• That: Adafruit IO

I referenced this "Internet of Things" Instructable to set up Adafruit IO.

Step 3: Assemble Your Electronic Parts

You’ll need to get your soldering tools and skills ready. Below are the assembling tutorials taken from Adafruit:

• Your standard LCD to your i2c/SPI backpack
  • Wire it up to arduino and run the sample code
  • Test your contrast with this circuit
• Your 14 Segment Alphanumeric LED Featherwing
  • Wire it up to arduino and run the sample code

Make sure you run all the sample codes in the assembling tutorials above first before moving onto STEP 4. This helps you troubleshoot any early soldering failures or component damages.

So now, you have two separate parts. It’s time to connect them together.

Step 4: Design Your Circuit & Wire Everything

This diagram is a good reference for wiring your circuit after the wing has been attached on the feather onto the breadboard. Count correctly and it’ll all be fine!

Step 5: The Code

This is what I have so far, and it should work, but it doesn't.... If you find out what was the problem, could you let me know? Thanks!!

Step 6: Design & Make Your Case

The coat is a good way to customise the box to your likings.

Step 7: Put Everything Together

To accommodate all the wires, I made a bigger case and included a platform inside the casing to raise the alphanumeric . (I had originally wanted it to be a sort of Tamagotchi keychain one can carry everywhere, but the circuit requires a lot of wiring to support both LCD, so I had to compromise the form. Please let me know if there is a better way to do this!)

And there you have it. Task Zero.