Look, if something happened to you every three weeks or so to basically turn you into a different person and factored heavily into whether any new humans were created, you’d probably want to keep abreast of the schedule, yeah? Yeah. So, while there are, of course, a ton of ways to do this with your phone, most of those apps do gross things with your data. Are you angry yet?
[Jakoba the Online Witch] certainly was, or if not angry, at least annoyed. So she built a glowing egg timer, which shines a different color based on current point in her cycle, to let her know when she is fertile and expecting Aunt Flo.
The coolest part is that this is an actual egg from one of [Jakoba]’s backyard chickens. No. The coolest part is how she was able to make so many holes without breaking it. (It took four tries.)
After bleaching the insides, the egg was ready to glow. As [Jakoba] says, the guts are simple — just a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266, a WS2812 LED, and a heatsink. The enclosure consists of an inverted peanut bowl with a glass ornament hot-glued in place.
Once it was put together, all she had to do was add it in Home Assistant and use the current calendar state to trigger services from the YAML configuration.
Would you prefer an on-body solution? Here’s an earring that tracks temperature.
I followed the link to learn more about how the holes in the egg were made, but didn’t find much on that.
As an aside, I also clicked on the WordPress cookie policy link while there and was surprised how extensive it is.
you saved me from following the link for the same purpose!
i like to imagine sprinkled acid? do a few droplets, let them work, rinse it off before it starts to smear, rotate the egg and do some droplets on the other side??
Nothing that exotic, it’d just be a Dremel with a burr bit. It is pretty, I should try this.
I’ve seen patterns cut in egg shells with a laser, never tried it though. Maybe I should finally try that too.
wow! seems like that’d take a much steadier hand with the dremel than i have!
Have you tried more / less coffee?
Using the flexible shaft thing helps (less weight), also put the tool into a vice so you can hold the lightweight fragile thing in your hands. You get more feedback for how well things are going.
Yes, that’s exactly what I did!
Thank you!
B^)
Rotary tool. Need to have fresh bits or abrasive tips. Sandpaper or diamond tend to load up.
If you’ve been cutting any metals (and yes aluminum too) or ceramics or glass. don’t try to use that bit on the eggs.
Need to keep the bit cleaned of any buildup. This may mean swapping out often.
Tool speed tends to heat up and melt any leftover membranes or whites.
Same issue with plastics. Wood tends to gum things from saps/resins and any processed wood products that have adhesives are nasty for gumming up burrs and sandpapers or diamond bits.
After all of that. Now you have to have a good amount of patience and never ever force the bit.
Let it skim the surface and slowly work it through and create your first trace of the hole.
If you’ve ever used a wire brush on motor and understand using the tips without bending the wires, then you likely have the basics of not forcing the burrs.
Don’t be afraid to set up a block or some books or whatever you can lightly brace your hands with to help you not push too hard and stay steady.
Might even use that ball swivel base hobby vice to make an comfortable prop for your hand. No don’t try clamping the egg though.
This is awesome mostly because of the cool looking egg but also an intriguing IOT solution that’s targeted to the other half of the population. As a man in America, sex ed didn’t really dive into menstrual cycles in the 90’s. And I’m embarrassed to say but it wasn’t until my late twenties when my partner and I were trying to conceive did I learn about ovulation—prior to that I wrongly assumed a woman could get pregnant at any time except when she’s on her period; just dumb.
I am curious if the spreadsheet method is tedious to maintain and its accuracy, especially with off-cadence cycles that are often caused by residual side effects of pregnancy or birth control similarly mentioned in the article. Back in 2015, my partner got pregnant again due to the birth control throwing off her cycle, but the app she was using was inaccurate as it used a simple calculator based on the last reported period. Although we’ve swapped the birth control for something a little more permanent on my side after that, she uses Fitbit’s tracker that seems better at catching those irregularities that she’s steady experiencing.
In any case, this is still super cool and with two daughters now and one coming up to having to deal with this stuff, this looks like a great cool, and somewhat discrete, visual to help them understand their cycles with privacy built in. Thank you for this contribution to society.
I’m using two different ways to track. One is a google form, which I find a little tedious but use for important changes (like the start of a period). The other is making use of an app called Daylio, which I use anyway. It tracks my mood, and it’s possible to add other things to track. Like PMS/fertility symptoms, which I added. Then every once in a while I upload the exported .CSV to a google drive, which automatically updates a tracking sheet in my tracker system. Then, the calculators modify my predictions and history.
So, not very tedious.
Every three weeks?
The average human cycle lasts 28 days. 21 days isn’t unheard of, and neither is 35 days. But 4 weeks will be a better estimate than 3 weeks for most women…
mansplained by…
cw
Except, that the 4th week is the period itself, which lasts around a week. Making a total of 4 weeks. I think it is just worded badly at the start of the article
Seems like overkill to have this driven by home assistant just for what is essentially a timer.
Maybe, but it’s a database with a nice frontend thats already up and running.
Not really. Her cycle isn’t going to be exact clockwork, and if things come up early, she can just click a button in HA or whatever to adjust the calendar.
It is not driven by HA, nor is it a simple timer. It is a complex calculator taking in account all added symptoms, running in Google Sheets. It just reports its findings to HA, which drives my smart light which the article was about.
This is a really cool project. Curious what sorts of ‘algorithms’ you used (Creighton? STM?), and whether there’s some open-source library or description of the algorithm you used to create your Google Sheet.
I recently downloaded an app called Drip https://bloodyhealth.gitlab.io/ that claims it respects user privacy in ways other apps don’t. It was more of a curiosity than anything — my wife and I are entering a phase of life where this doesn’t really matter anymore. Seems that, with the increasing attention given to these approaches, a well-maintained library would be a boon for everyone.
…title left me completely baffled, until it occurred to me that you have misspelled the word ‘œuf‘.
Regards…
Just wanted to put in a good word from the pun appreciation society. Cheers!
“Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.”
Fred Allen
I first thought it was an egg timer for the kitchen. Fresh eggs incoming. Pot of water at a boil.
Well when a fresh egg is coming in boiling water can come in handy, good for a nice, relaxing cup of tea.
ha! Nice one
It’s very pretty and well designed, whatever the end use !
I first wondered how she removed the edible part of the egg and it was obvious that a larger hole was made at the base…
For drilling the small holes, I thought it might be easier to use the big-endian hole to fill the inside with a clear/translucent resin which would have made the operation easier once hardened, while still allowing internal lighting.
No, there was no larger hole. I used the blow-out technique people use for decorating eggs. Push a small hole on top and bottom of the egg, then blow out the raw inner fillings. It’s not easy to clean after, because the holes are so very small. Which is why I haven’t used resin. Although I did consider it!
This is apparently a decorative but low resolution calendar, which is not very effective for finding when you are actually fertile or not. You can do that by learning your fertility symptoms and feeding the data into a rules algorithm, which is simple to learn or can be done by an app such as Peak Day. The Sympto-Thermal Method it uses has a method effectiveness rate of over 99%. There are other fertility awareness based methods which are about as effective, but use other combinations of symptoms. Check out the Fertility Science Institute or Natural Womanhood.
Calendar Rhythm is only 85% effective, if you are always regular and follow the real rules (which most people don’t know and require historical data).
No, it is a rather complex calculator based on the Sympto-Thermal Method/Natural Family Planning system. But the article is more about the lamp than the system I built to drive it.
Thanks again for letting us know details we were wondering about!