Making a Pomodoro Timer

Slacking Off at work

I get distracted Easy

My mind drifts if I try to focus on a single task For more than

20-30 Minutes.

If I try to fight the urge to just keep working my productivity goes

way down.

I end up working for a bit, then slacking off for half an hour.

I can get more work done If I embrace my limitation and force myself

to take a break.

Pomodoro Technique

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by

Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a kitchen timer to break

work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in length, separated by short

breaks. Each interval is known as a Pomodoro, from the Italian word for

tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a

university student.

The Timer

There are plenty of Pomodoro Apps I've tried using an app, but I

would often forget.

I wanted a physical device that was always on by desk and could grab

my attention.

I looked for a dedicated physical Pomodoro timer, but only found the

kitchen timers

I decided to make myself a timer using a Circuit Playground

Express

Circuit Playground Express

In my past episode about using a Pi pico to type passwords I

mentioned I owned a playground express.

The playground express is a micro controller with a lot of built ins

2 buttons

10 multi color LED

...

Runs circuit python with lots of libraries so it is easy to

program.

TDD

About once every other year I decided to start a project with as

much TDD as I can.

TDD Basics

Write a test BEFORE you write the code

Run the test - It will fail

Write the simplest code that will pass the test

Run the test and make sure it passes

Refactor/improve the code if needed.

TDD advantages

Code is easy to separate into discrete functions

Parts of the code can be rewritten without affecting the rest

confidence in rewrites

pomodoro.py

Circuit python looks for and runs a file named

code.py

A lot of the circuit Python code has to be run on the micro

controller

My Developers workstation does not have the LED's or buttons

I split the some code into a separate file based on if it could run

in "regular" python.

I used TDD as much as possible to test the functions in

pomodoro.py

code.py

BREAK_MINUTES = 5

WORK_MINUTES = 25

Functions that require hardware

No tests.

counts down and changes color of led

minutes divided by number of LED

Using the timer

Ready

Green Light next to button to start work Period

Blue Light next to button to start break Period

Working

White Background

Green progress pixels

Break

White Background

Blue progress pixels

Button A

Start working

Button B

Start Break

Links

https://gitlab.com/norrist/circuit_playground_pomodoro

https://circuitpython.org/downloads