A Robotic Solution for Late-Night Doomscrolling

How many times have you picked up your phone for a quick email check, only to find yourself staring at mindless content on social media an hour later? We all do it, and many of us do it every day. The impulse to waste time on social media is often the strongest at night when we are lying in bed, with all of the day’s other distractions out of the way. But isn’t there a better way to spend this time? Like, maybe… sleeping? Or for that matter, literally anything else?

There is little question that we would be better off spending less time in the digital trash heap. But even though we know this, it is so hard to avoid. Engineer WillsBuilds struggles with this problem, and has had no luck in kicking the habit. So he did what engineers do, and built a robot to force him to put his phone away at night. Now, if he doesn’t give this robot his phone on schedule, it will mercilessly annoy him until he hands it over.

WillsBuilds’ robot consists of a 3D-printed hand attached to a rack and pinion system that is mounted to the wall next to his bed. When the phone is placed in the hand, a button is depressed that causes a servo to close fingers around it. The hand then lowers itself out of reach via the rack and pinion, which is driven by a DC motor. When morning comes, the same system will bring the phone back within reach.

But what if WillsBuilds should defy the robot and not hand over his phone at the appointed time? Should he be so foolish, then an LED strip above his bed would turn on at full brightness and flash on and off until he hands the phone over or goes mad.

The robot is powered by an ESP32 development board that is soldered onto a custom PCB. The PCB is equipped with an L293NE motor driver and screw terminals that break out GPIO pins for the button, LEDs, and motors.

This is a clever solution, but it could be defeated pretty easily by the hardcore phone addict in a dozen ways. Reaching over and simply unplugging the LEDs, for instance, would do the trick. What would you do differently to harden the system against cheaters?