Penguin Screen Time Reminder

This was a birthday gift for my mom, who has suffered multiple concussions in the last year and needs to be mindful of the amount of time she spends looking at screens. The entire design and fabrication of this device took place in the 24 hours before I saw her for her birthday, but despite the time crunch I made it a priority to make the device visually appealing and easy to use for her.

The project features a "+15 minutes" button that increments a timer up by 15 minutes, and a start/stop button that allows the timer to be paused for things like going to fill up a glass of water or going to the bathroom. The start/stop is the penguin itself on top of the device. There is also a passive buzzer that plays a song when the countdown is over.

The countdown is displayed on a 4-digit 7 segment display housed in an "ice float" that the penguin is standing on. The display was working perfectly until at the last minute it started acting up, as seen in the video, and I didn't have time to fix it before gifting it. The display is readable enough with the issue present, so I decided to gift it anyway so she could start using it. I plan on fixing it when I see my mom next.

The ice float has heat sunk threaded inserts that allow screws to attach it to the blue "water" base of the device, making it easy to open up to change the battery or perform fixes like I will do soon for the display.

My mom likes the movies Elf and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, both which feature scenes with their title characters floating away on an ice float, which was my inspiration for the themed design of this device. The penguin was a 3D model I found online, but the ice float enclosure and the water base were designed by me in Solidworks and then 3D printed.