Multisensory Book

This is an IOT device that can be controlled using Alexa. Routines can be set up using the Alexa app so that at the designated time the book will open up and use a variety of modalities to get the users' attention. The code used to make the sound work is from SFX-I2S-web-trigger whilst the code used for being able to connect to Alexa is from arduino-esp8266-alexa-wemo-switch.

How to run the device

Initial Code Setup

1. Download the repository. Some of the files relate to how to make the physical device. The files you need to make sure you have for the code are "book_device.ino", "wavspiffs.cpp", "wavspiffs.h" and "data". "data" contains the .wav file that the device plays and the "wavspiffs" files are from bbx10. The main file we are concerned with is "book_device.ino".
2. Change the network name and password. These can be found as follows in the code. If using eduroam take a look at the section of the readme on Internet Access.

const char* ssid = "NameOfNetwork";  // CHANGE: Wifi name
const char* password = "AardvarkBadgerHedgehog";  // CHANGE: Wifi password 
String friendlyName = "TheDevice";        // CHANGE: Alexa device name

You can also change the name of the device should you so wish.

Initial Arduino Editor Setup

Based off the Arduino IDE for ESP8266 and the file system setup.

1. Install the the SiLabs CP2104 Driver. This will allow you to upload code to the ESP8266 using a micro USB cable to the Feather HUZZAH with the other side in your computer's USB port.
2. Install the Arduino IDE 1.6.8 or greater and open it up.
3. Install the ESP8266 Board Package. To do this navigate to Arduino Preferences and enter http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json into the Additional Board Manager URLs field. Then navigate to the Boards Manager (found under Tools->Board) and install the ESP8266 Board Package. Close the Boards Manager window once the install process has completed. This guide is a good resource to use if you have trouble adding 3rd party boards.
4. Restart the Arduino Editor.
5. Select Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 from the Tools->Board dropdown. Whilst still in Tools set the CPU frequency as 80MHz. The Flash Size can be kept at 4M (3M SPIFFS). For Upload Speed, select 115200 baud. You will also need to set the port as whichever port you are using.

From here we want to install the ESP8266FS tool.

1. Download the tool: https://github.com/esp8266/arduino-esp8266fs-plugin/releases/download/0.1.3/ESP8266FS-0.1.3.zip.
2. In your Arduino sketchbook directory, create tools directory if it doesn't exist yet. Unpack the tool into tools directory, the path should look like <home_dir>/Arduino/tools/ESP8266FS/tool/esp8266fs.jar.
3. Restart the Arduino Editor. Under Tools there should now be an option for ESP8266 Sketch Data Upload.

Uploading the code to the Feather HUZZAH

1. Connect any data-capable micro USB cable to the Feather HUZZAH and the other side to your computer's USB port. This can be done by carefully pushing the Feather HUZZAH down so it slightly sticks out of the bottom of its encasing box (as shown in the photo).

2. Make sure that the Arduino Editor is set to the correct port (Tools->Port).
3. If you have changed the .wav file in "data", or it is your first time uploading the file to the Feather Huzzah, click on ESP8266 Sketch Data Upload in Tools and wait for it to upload.
4. When that is finished click the upload button in the Arduino Editor to upload the code to the Feather Huzzah.

Modality Switching

If you wish to change the intensity of the device this can be done simply by altering this piece of code:

// Mode of intensity
char subtle = 'S';
char mediocre = 'M';
char intensive = 'I';

char mode = subtle;

Simply change char mode = depending on what you want. Then re-upload the code to the Feather HUZZAH

Controlling the device with Alexa

1. Set up your Alexa device with the Alexa App.
2. Make sure that you are connected to the internet and the device is powered on.
3. Go into Settings->Smart Home and click Add Device. Alexa should discover the device under the friendly name you've chosen for it.
4. From here you can treat the device as you would any other smart home device, you can create routines for it and turn it on and off with Alexa via voice command.

Internet Access

The Raspberry Pi is simply used for internet access. In order for the device to be able to work both the ESP8266 and the Alexa need internet access. If you're using a secure network (such as eduroam) it may be difficult to connect up the devices. I'm using a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and a USB wifi dongle. I connect the wifi dongle up to eduroam by following these instructions by the wonderful Will Price, simply replacing wlan0 with wlan1. I then set the wifi chip on the Raspberry Pi board up as a hotspot by following this guide. From here you can connect to the hotspot which should then give you access to eduroam and the internet.

When setting up eduroam on the Raspberry Pi I initially made the mistake of running the wpa_supplicant more than once. If you type pgrep wpa_supplicant into your terminal there should be only one process running. If there is more then one you can type pkill wpa_supplicant to kill them and start over.

Further to this, following Will Price's instructions did give me internet access, however, I initially had to repeat the process every time I restarted the Raspberry Pi. The easy fix for this was to move the terminal commands into the /etc/rc.local file.