Like most people, I’m stuck at home right now. Trapped, in an environment which is under my full control, and I’m surrounded by my books and technical resources, and free to do whatever I choose, whenever I choose. Which, it turns out, is not quite the recipe for unbridled productivity I had imagined only a few weeks ago.

(Although, hey, I fully acknowledge that merely being bored or distracted right now is a lovely problem to be able to have)

Anyway, I wanted something to help me focus on tasks and avoid distractions. I remember reading good things about the Pomodoro technique a few years ago, and I thought it might be a good thing to get into again.

There’s some online sites you can use as a timer, but I wanted something a bit more tangible.

I had an LED ring laying around, and I actually had the case designed and cut earlier for another project, so really all I had to do is reprogram the arduino.

The user interface is about as minimalistic as it gets; as soon as it’s plugged in, it starts counting down from 25 minutes. If you want to stop it, you unplug it.  If you want to reset it, you unplug it and plug it back in again. Voila!

The ring shows the amount of time remaining, starting in green:

Then the last 5 minutes are displayed as yellow:

And once the time is up the whole ring shows up as red:

The ring is from here:

https://www.jaycar.com.au/duinotech-rgb-led-circular-board/p/XC4385

And files here for anyone that wants to make their own:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4284881