Nathan Tepool's CLiCC Remote Is an Espressif ESP32-Powered Clicker for Home Automation and More
Eight satisfyingly-tactile buttons and room for expansion make the CLiCC a flexible friend for triggering a range of activities.
Nathan Tepool is trying to make it easier to control your home automation systems on-the-go with a physical remote offering eight tactile push button switches and a handy pocket click for portability: the CLiCC Remote.
"CLiCC Remote is a portable, wireless, eight-button remote capable of drawing power from a 3.7V LiPo battery (sold separately)," Tepool writes of his creation. "Our current demo code sends MQTT messages over Wi-Fi, and we’ve been working toward an update that will support Bluetooth LE communication with Android devices. Most importantly, CLiCC Remote has clicky buttons that feel great when you click them. (And a pocket clip so you can click them whenever you want. Within reason, of course.)"
The CLiCC Remote itself is built around an Espressif ESP32 module, a clone of the WEMOS Lolin32 Lite, Tepool explains, offering a dual-core 240MHz Tensilica Xtensa LX6 processor, 520kB of static RAM (SRAM) and 4MB of off-chip flash memory, and radios for 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity. Some of the module's general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins are connected to the eight satisfyingly tactile switches on the remote — while others are brought out for use with optional external hardware.
"Thanks to the incredibly flexible and wildly popular ESP32 module at its core — and the open source software that drives it — CLiCC Remote will eventually do whatever you want it to," Tepool claims.
"Examples might include," Tepool continues, "smart-home applications (of course); slide-deck advancement (boring); remote photography (creepy); music generation (eight buttons is more than enough for a trumpet, right?); starting your car in the morning (very cool but we're not sure how to do this yet); executing scripts on your laptop (because why not); detonating explosives (please don't)."
Tepool is preparing to launch CLiCC Remote kits on Crowd Supply, while in the meantime design files for the PCBs and source code for the MQTT message-sending demo are available on GitHub under an unspecified license — with, Tepool promises, Bluetooth sample code and STL files for printing alternate enclosures due in the near future.