Hello Hacker News! I've spent the last 6 months or so designing and building this, The Attention Button. It's an IoT desk toy that lets you send a quick nudge to whoever you hold dear, letting them know you're thinking of them. Like a direct line to their attention. It is my first major electronics project and I have learnt so much making it. I'd love to hear what you guys think!
Show HN: I made a desk toy for people in long-distance relationships | Better HN
So, the website is essentially an HTTP interface for managing an MQTT broker. You create an account, make a "room" (application concept, not part of mqtt), and then put your account name and the room secret phrase into the device (it throws up a captive portal). The device then uses these to connect to the broker to an MQTT topic that's sha256(secret) and from there it's just simply passing messages between devices.
