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Ryan Voots 2015-10-12 13:53:25 -07:00
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_drafts/2015-10-11-nasa-jpl.markdown
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---
author: simcop2387
date: '2015-10-11 16:07:00-0700'
layout: post
slug: nasa-jpl
status: publish
title: JPL Openhouse
? ''
: - General
---
Test post please ignore

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_drafts/2015-10-15-quirky-nimbus.markdown Normal file
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---
author: simcop2387
date: '2015-10-15 10:00:00-0700'
layout: post
slug: quirky-hack
status: publish
title: Hacking a Quirky Nimbus
? ''
: - General
---
So a couple of months ago I managed to get a good deal on a Quirky Nimbus[1].
It's a really nicely built set of dials and LED displays with an electric imp inside.
It's got a number of problems though, mostly around the software that runs the device:
1. Programming the wifi settings with the Wink app on all of my android devices just does not work at all. I ended up having to borrow an iPhone to get it to program.
2. Unplugging the device seems to require reprogramming the dials with the wifi settings again. I have no idea why it's like this, it just makes no sense to not store this in NVRAM of some kind.
3. Sometimes it just wouldn't turn on, it just wouldn't do anything at all. No lights, no dials, nothing. I'd have to try multiple times to get it to function at all.
4. The dials can only be controlled by roughly 6 different services that are approved by Quirky. Nothing else can affect them.
5. The screens can be affected by IFTTT, but because of the way it works, only one of them can be affected if you're trying to use the IFTTT webhook API, so you can't set custom messages on all 4 displays.
6. If you could get API Access from Quirky then the two issues above disappear, however they're very unresponsive I haven't heard from them in over 3 months on any of these issues.
Because of all of this, I decided to find out about hacking the device and giving it a better treatment. I quickly discovered that Edu Garcia[2] had actually done all of the dirty work for me.
I couldn't use the existing electric imp on the device since I couldn't get it unlocked like he did some time ago. Instead I'm taking an ESP8266 ESP-12E module and shoving it in there to do all the brains of the device. I'm also pairing it with an ATTiny 85 for doing all the PWM for the audio and screen brightness.
First thing I did was remove the electric imp. I didn't take pictures of the removal but it involved some chipquik and a hot air gun because it was glued down too. I removed it because I didn't want it to accidentally interfere with the new brains. [INSERT PICTURE HERE].