Just Make a Decision Already!

One of the best-documented patterns in human behavior is the difficulty people have in making decisions when two or more of them get together. By the time a group of people come to an agreement about what they want for lunch, more often than not it is already time to get back to the office. And those who are married may not have tasted the delicious goodness of their favorite restaurant when they wanted it for years to keep the peace.

But truth be told, once we get past the excruciating experience of making the shared decision, we are usually pretty happy with wherever we end up. YouTuber Makerinator recognized that life could be a little bit smoother if we could just bypass that initial back-and-forth altogether. So to make things easier in his own life, he built what he calls the Decisioninator. It takes the guesswork out of mealtime by deciding the question for us, Las Vegas style.

The Decisioninator looks like a tiny, tabletop slot machine that displays a long list of restaurant logos. When a button is pressed, the virtual wheel “spins” until one of the restaurants is selected. And once the machine speaks, the debate is over. Just like Mom used to say, you’ll eat it and you’ll like it, and there better not be any whining. Trust me, listen when the Decisioninator speaks.

Since a Raspberry Pi can be used to make or fix literally anything, Makerinator used a Pi 4 to build the device. A small DSI display and a few buttons were wired to the computer. And naturally some LEDs were included as well for good measure, because we all love blinky things. On the software side, the flutter-pi library was leveraged to make it simple to build a Flutter app without the overhead of a full desktop operating system.

The case of the Decisioninator was made from pieces of laser-cut wood that were glued together. Magnets attached two of the faces so that the internal hardware could be accessed later. The wood was spray painted black to cover up any imperfections, then some really cool artwork was produced and sublimated onto the wood.

While he was at it, the Makerinator also added a second button to support making different types of decisions. The Decisioninator’s alternative modes can take the difficulty out of splitting up chores, deciding where to go for date night, and picking which streaming service to watch.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind having one of these on my desk to help me decide which project from my list I should build next. That first step is often the hardest of all.