Sanne Kalkman

Developer / Teacher / Crafter

Sanne is a former teacher turned software engineer. Currently, she works at CodeSandbox, where she’s one of two Elixir developers responsible for the backend. When she’s not coding, you’ll probably find her either 25 browser tabs deep into a new CS topic, learning yet another new hobby (the current one is 3d art), or behind her sewing machine.

Talk:
Counting Cat Kilometers - How I used a GRiSP 2 to build a Cat Tracking Device

As most cat owners, I want to know what my cats are up to at all times. Since they are indoor cats, they love running on their big exercise wheel, but I had no way of knowing how much they actually run. When I recently was given a GRiSP 2 board, the answer was obvious: I would somehow build a device to track the distance they walk on their wheel.

This talk will give a walkthrough of the project and the main challenges along the way from both the hardware and software sides of the story, in hopes that it will inspire and motivate others to try a hardware project for the first time.

Key Takeaways:

  • You don’t need a super serious project idea to dip your toes into hardware / embedded systems.
  • With a bit of patience and a lot of trial and error anyone can build something!

Target Audience:

  • Anyone with an interest in (small) hardware projects, especially those who - like me- are new to GRiSP and adjacent things and might be intimidated.
  • Folks who like talks about fun and kind of silly projects
  • People who want to see photos of cute cats