In our office at Expedia, we have a beer keg and a bell we ring when we pour a beer. The purpose is to bring people together for a happy hour. However, now that our office is growing in size locally as well as around the world, not everyone is able to hear the bell ring. To address this problem I decided to connect our beer bell to Slack, the messaging platform our user experience team uses.

First, I analyzed the bell to determine how it worked physically. It has a plunger which presses against a hammer which strikes the upper part of the bell to cause it to ring. I sketched a diagram of the bell to help me figure out what kind of sensor or switch I could use to detect when the bell rang, and how I would fit the components inside without affecting the bell's functionality.

I decided to use some sort of button or switch placed between the plunger and the top of the hammer, as this would allow me to detect when the bell was rung with the least interference with its ringing sound. After some research, I selected a couple of types of game switches and buttons from Adafruit to try. I wanted to use an Arduino microcontroller and a wifi chip to connect to the internet and make an HTTP post to the Slack API. I decided to use an Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP9266 Wifi as it was small in size, and had a wifi chip on-board.

When the bell is rung, the game switch is triggered, which is detected by the Arduino. It then connects to the Slack API through a wifi connection and posts to our #happy-hour channel as the Beer Bell!

The completed bell is now in its rightful place on the office keg.

I like making everyday objects connected to the internet to serve a purpose. This bell is an example of that. By putting a sensor and an Arduino inside of it, we can connect it to Slack and use it to foster an increased sense of community between our global offices. Part of its charm and delightfulness comes from the unexpected fact that it is a familiar object that has a suprising capability.

I built on my knowledge of the Slack API I learned when I made my first Slackbot (to countdown the days left until some of us move to a new office in Seattle) the month before.