[Noisebridge-discuss] How hard would it be...

[Glen Jarvis]

Speaking of "how hard would it be..." to do something.

I am thinking about a "digital pivotal-scrum board."

All it is is a section of perf board/plywood, etc with a metal surface so that magnets would stick to it. The board would be divided into different sections. The magnetic pieces are picked up from one area and placed on another area.

All of that is pretty simple. But, I need each of these magnetic widgets to be able to have a unique identifier. When the magnetic widget is picked up from word section of the board, we need to register the removal of that unique identifier from that section. But, more importantly, when the magnetic widget is placed on the new section, that section needs to register the new identifier.

The magnetic piece is only for convenience -- picking pieces up and putting them down. Any other means would also work. The registering of pieces removed from a section is superfluous. Really, the registering in a new section is important.

I am imagining different wire meshes in different areas where the wire meshes don't touch. This is simple for metallic contact between pieces.

Now, for the "unique identifier," I am wondering what's already available. An arduino with Ethernet shield makes sense, but has the mess of Ethernet cables. I imagine there's a wireless equivalent. And, that would work where each arduino is independent and the different panels of the board register differently in the arduino, so it can transmit it's state change to the network. That seems sooo expensive and overkill. These widgets need to be bare-bones cheap and have only one purpose: transmit it's unique identifier and the registered state change.

Does anyone have ideas? I would want something much cheaper than a full arduino board when proto-typing was over. I'm imagining these pieces cost less than $2 - $3 when finished...

Am I totally smoking it thinking that this is doable (and reasonable costs) with some thought and creativity?  Think of this as an "in-and-out" physical peg board for the people in your company -- and you want to register what's on the peg board dynamically on a web page.

 Any ideas?


Glen