Winkekatze 🐈

The

Idea came up at $file

CCCamp 2015. A Worldwide Web of Winkekatzen! What an awesome Idea.
We bought a cheap Winkekatze ("lucky cat in international") of off eBay. Its actually a quite hackable cat, i can recommend it. We made a simple $file

controller for it and a friend wrote the $file

Software.

We used an ESP01, which is usually the cheapest available. But any other should work fine. Actually, any other should be finer, as the ESP01 is rather finicky to program.

We used an LM1117 regulator. Dont even try the smaller footprints, they wont suffice. Better use a buck converter or an LM317. We had lots of trouble with ESPs due to insufficient power suplies. And no, they don't fail gracefully. They just act up, and you end up debugging endlessly until you realize it was the supply. Trust me on that.

Second Edition

We used a smaller Cat, Wemos D1 and skipped the whole servo shenanigans. There is now also an awesome $file

Anleitung. The normale Winkelektronik will wink from standstill just fine with a single short pulse. A simple small signal transistor is all thats needed.
We also swapped the ESP01 for a Wemos D1, which is muuuuuuuuuuch easier to program.

CyberWinkekatze

This one skips the Cat altogether and simply uses a small OLED Display module for the Wemos D1.
The software is $file

heere. Its just a Weemos D1 (or clone) and a oled display shield for it (or a clone). Mine has two buttons, one is used to wink.