{"id":1104,"date":"2019-07-19T06:03:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2019-07-19T06:12:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:12:03","slug":"i-wanted-to-stop-sleeping-next-to-my-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/19\/i-wanted-to-stop-sleeping-next-to-my-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"I wanted to stop sleeping next to my phone."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The painting “Mobile Lovers” by Banksy<\/a> always struck a chord with me. I know I spend a lot of time looking at my phone, and am wary of it being at the expense of experiencing real life. I think it’s a very powerful visual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source:Banksy Gives Controversial Mobile Lovers Artwork to Bristol Youth Club<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One specific scenario in which I would really like to stop looking at my phone is in bed right before I sleep<\/strong>. There are countless articles about the damage it does to your sleep quality. However, like many people with operational responsibilities at tech companies, there’s the possibility that I could be paged at any time<\/strong>, and those pages come via my phone. Turning it off before bed is not a realistic option. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I will often check my phone to see if I missed anything important. Even with Night Mode<\/a> on, this is still a fairly big bright light in my face, disrupting my ability to get back to sleep. Worse, I might see some distracting thing that lures me into needless latenight phone engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality is I didn’t need all of my phone’s capabilities at night<\/strong>, I just needed to be able to receive critical notifications from specific sources. I knew I still wanted something next to my bed that I could glance at – but Not My Phone<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My idea – what if I had a low-light bedside clock that could show notifications on it? I had a spare Raspberry Pi<\/a> that wasn’t being put to use. Maybe I could code something up between it and my phone, using Bluetooth or similar. As I started to poke around, I found a solution that was even simpler… a company called Pushbullet<\/a> had already done 90% of the work for me – they built an app that lets you get your phone’s push notifications via an API. So… I grabbed a domain and notmyphone.com<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The case does somewhat resemble a homemade bomb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I picked up this cheap screen & case<\/a> for the Raspberry Pi since it didn’t look too ugly in the photos. As I later learned, the photos don’t show the power cord, which sticks out the top and looks ridiculous. But, c’est la vie – it worked and can be turned down nice and dim. Since the Pushbullet API<\/a> supports websockets for notifications, I was able to build an almost completely static site (it’s hosted on GitHub Pages<\/a>) to serve the UI<\/a>, and updates are sent directly to the client. The only dynamic part I needed was the OAuth login, which I just built as a Cloudflare Worker<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was targeting the 480×320 screen, it’s simple enough that it can really run anywhere, and you can easily test it out in the browser. I wanted it to be able to accumulate a few notifications (it’s coded to store the last 4) in case I woke up and missed more than one thing. They just stack up and the oldest one rolls off the screen as they accumulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n