OpenTube

I Tried to Engineer My Way Out of ADHD

Maik

7,014 views

I spent six months building PomoBox: a pocket-sized timer to help me focus. How difficult could it really be? Turns out, very.

From CAD and 3D printing to an expensive PCB that became a smoke machine, this is the story of building a working device and finding a reason to keep making things.

CHAPTERS
00:00 A project about getting distracted
00:47 The tomato method
02:06 Building something physical
02:50 Fornax Studio
04:03 The first enclosure
05:21 Make it a box
06:13 Old TVs and cathode-ray tubes
07:00 From wires to a PCB
07:33 An expensive smoke machine
07:45 Starting again with an ESP32
08:01 Bringing the new design to life
08:17 The working prototype
08:29 Why making things matters
09:19 What comes next

Would you be interested in a small batch of Zer0 timers? Let me know in the comments and tell me what you're building.

Special thanks to Grant McNatt, Alex Mills, Cristian Leyva, and Casey Johnson.

MUSIC
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Project, build, CAD, electronics, software and original footage: Maik.
Fornax branding and application assets: Fornax Studio.

#3DPrinting #DIYElectronics #engineering

7 Comments

@adphoenix4570 9 days ago Pinned

My ADHD Made Me Need This

@Ɛvan 6 days ago

I find our brains funny, we are so creative and smart, but can't do simple things like showering or doing laundry. Like this one time I hyper focused and built my own AI for 4 days straight, got bored, and haven't been back to it since. I love what you're doing, I wish there was more products for ADHD man, it's hard.

@leverknight1 6 days ago

I've had an idea kicking around for something like this but having also have a 'clock-in' and 'clock-out' function to log my work hours as well as a breaktime counter to make sure I'm actually billing my time accurately. The downside is I'm not permitted to have devices with wireless tech in my office, so I would need to use an ESP w/o wifi/bluetooth, or an arduino with an RTC.

@justmeajah 5 days ago

New subs!!

@Enderborn272 7 days ago

Great idea and definitely something that addresses the distracting nature of most organizers. Been trying to learn to manage new TBI exacerbated ADHD. Only thing I might add is an option for a radial progress bar for the timer. Something to mimic those "visual timer" things that help a lot of people (myself included). Will be adding this to my "build eventually" list. I would probably buy one of them if you sold them as a small batch to avoid falling down the rabbit hole of refining my 3d printer settings and learning about the 12 Arduino dev boards sitting next to my desk.

@Arafat_sid1 5 days ago

Hey Maik!

I saw your video on YouTube and really liked the way you explain complex topics in a calm and practical way, I was wondering if you need a Video Editor. I'd love to help make your videos even more engaging.