Several times a year my company has so called hacking days. Everybody can work on a project he is exited about. Me and some colleagues built a happiness tracker that is now placed next to our entrance, so that the co-workers can vote for their happiness upon arrival or departure. The data is sent to Grafite so that everybody can have a look on the insights.

Step 1: Thinking About the Arrangement of the Components

First of all we thought about how to arrange all the components like the buttons, the leds, the raspberry pi, the cables and the casing.

Material:

raspberry pi (incl. W-LAN)
mini sd card
breadboard
protoboard
leds
resistors
buttons
cables
shrinking tube
electrical tape
casing
power adapter

Step 2: Writing the Python Script

Then we wrote the Python script, which you can find here. We had 4 different buttons that had to be pressable and that should send data to the database. With a status led that should be on when there is power, we were able to see if the tracker is working. Also we built in a small animation to show the success after having pressed a button and also to make a small pause, so that there can't be one person pushing 60 times per minute.

Step 3: Connecting the Cables and the Buttons/leds

The the soldering began. We connected the cables and the buttons/leds and sealed the connections with the shrinking tube. Then we connected the components to the breadboard and soldered some of them directly to the protoboard.

Step 4: Connecting Protoboard With Raspberry Pi

The next step was to connect the components with the raspberry pi.

Step 5: Putting the Construction Into the Casing

Unfortunately we had quite huge cables so that our construction didn't want to fit into the casing. That meant, that we had to change the cables. We chose ribbon cable for that.

Step 6: The New Construction...

...looks pretty good :-)

Step 7: Preparing the Casing

Now we prepared the casing. We cut holes for the buttons, leds and powering adapter cable into the casing and we decorated it with adhesive foil.

Step 8: Placing the Buttons and the Leds...

...into the cover of the casing and fixing them with hot glue.

Step 9: Putting the Tracker Together

We placed the raspberry pi into the casing and screw it together.

Step 10: Plug in the Tracker...

...and check if everything is working. If the status led is on and the buttons can be pressed and they send data to the database, everything is just fine.