Software engineer Makerinator has shared the details of a project which he light heartedly claims “saved my marriage.” The Decisioninator was designed and produced to “optimize and automate” navigating the often tricky question ‘What do you want for dinner tonight?’ However, as with any good project, its design meant that it could be expanded to cover similarly tricky decisions covering the allocation of chores, date night venues, and movie night video stream choices.
Makerinator, says that his personal philosophy as a software engineer means that spending 40 hours to optimize a task and shave 3ms off is always “worth it.” And it is with this spirit that the creation of the Decisioninator began.
Decisioninator technology
Having learned lessons from a prior abandoned Decisioninator project, Makerinator drafted a new and improved plan based on Raspberry Pi 4. The Pi runs a lite version of Raspberry Pi OS, and the Flame Engine, built on top of Flutter UI would be used with Flutter’s reactive UI framework apps to run the application.
Makerinator mentions the use of the Flame Engine for this project. This is a modular Flutter game engine for 2D development. It seemed perfect for the linear but Wheel of Fortune style Decisioninator UI, and it made animation and collision detection easy, says the project maker.
To power the Pi, Makerinator used a 12V to 5V converter. Another detail shared was the use of the Pi’s GPIO to get input from the two user buttons that form the Decisioninator’s controls.
Woodwork challenges
Makerinator is the first to admit he isn’t a time served woodworking craftsman. However, he still managed to laser cut all the required ply sheeting and then construct a serviceable mini-arcade style kiosk to house the Decisioninator. Any woodworking sins were covered up by liberal sanding, spray-painting, and printed sublimated wraps.
Extra epoxy was used here and there, and a rotary tool used on the case and connector was described as “basically a get out of jail free card for my poor planning.”
In the end, everything looked cool in a retro-arcade way. To me, the finished machine looks like a shrunken 80s video game cabinet, with influences of Tempest, or Tron.
Using the Decisioninator
As mentioned above, there are two buttons on this device’s control deck to help “optimize and automate” your relationship-sensitive decisions. On the left, the larger red button sets the spinner in motion.
The smaller blue button to the right selects Decisioninator modes. These are: restaurants, chores, date night outings, and streaming services. In this way the Decisioninator has become “a Swiss army knife for indecision,” explains the Makerinator. And thus, his marriage was saved, “thanks to Flutter, a laser, and a gallon of five-minute epoxy.” Owners of Raspberry Pi shares (disclosure: not I) would also like to highlight the plucky little SBC’s role, too.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
