Sometimes when I’m out and about I want to interface with my phone in some way, but I don’t feel comfortable taking my phone out. One example is to retrieve bus times for a stop I’m at without a digital display.
My idea was a little thing I could interact with in my pocket. Probably using the M5StickC, with a little Joystick HAT attached. It would have a BLE connection to some custom app on my phone.
That solves input, but how do I receive input from it without holding anything?
Well I had two thoughts. First is that I sometimes wear hearing aids, which thanks to the wonders of the 21st century have Bluetooth connectivity. So I could have audio responses. The issue with this is the aforementioned “sometimes”.
Then I was trying to think, ok what can I use as output that I can do only by touch? And then I thought well I could put a vibration motor in it, and use vibrations. I started thinking “ok, I could have it buzz the menu number it’s on, or the bus times”, but what if I forget what the numbers correspond to?
Then I realised I was practically just describing Morse Code! With this I can hopefully receive somewhere between 5-20 WPM without an oversized amount of practice. Of course I can also use abbreviations to make receiving information faster.