The Rick was inspired by classic arcade cocktail cabinets. I wanted a device that would help me to be more mindful with my technology use.
I kept finding myself scrolling mindlessly on my phone at home. Just checking the time lead to me checking my notifications, to checking social media, to endlessly scrolling. I decided that I needed a dedicated lounge room device that could be optimised for a limited number of tasks. It needed to be:
I started designing The Rick while I was doing sales in the timber yard at Bunnings. They had a personal project section in their internal staff application (Reds) to encourage this sort of project, and it made it really easy to keep track of the materials I needed for the "case".
Electron turned out to be the perfect tool for the job. I was able to use my existing web development skills to create a native application. The background video may not be to everyones taste, but I really liked the idea of having a "living" background, and it fits with the cyber theme of the project. I love that it brings together a lot of different functionality into one place.
The dashboard features:
It has a row of buttons along the bottom that link to:
This is the prototype dashboard and app launcher in action on my dev machine.
Having detailed schematics means that I can get all of the timber cut using a CNC machine. This will make assembly a breeze. I'll be documenting the build process here throughout 2025, so check back later for more updates.