Sharing Presentation Slides: Physical Web using Micro:bit

I do lots of presentations to different meetups and conferences. Most of the time, I want to share my presentation material to people that actually attended my presentation. I like to share it only to them during the presentation. I also want to keep track of visitors and how many people actually downloaded the material.

I also organize the Hackster Live Dallas/Fort Worth meetup. And one of the ways to help sponsors learn about attendance is thru Hackster Check-In feature. We encourage our members to check-in to our meeting and also setup their Hackster account.

Few ways to accomplish this is to display a QR Code or a Bit.ly or goo.gl link. Let the audience scan it.

Typically it would look like this:

Thinking more about the project, I think it's a good application for Physical Web.

• I only want to share to the people nearby.

• I only want to share it for a limited time.

• I want to track visitors.

And since we're hosting a hardware meetup, how about we accomplish the same task using hardware devices. Why not?

Physical Web

According to Google, the Physical Web is an open approach to enable quick and seamless interactions with physical objects and locations, where everything is a tap away and you can see what's useful around you. Have the ability to broadcast content from any object or place.

I have the link to my presentation hosted on Google Docs. I want to share them with attendees. All the attendees have to do is to download this app: Physical Web Android App or the Physical Web iOS App. There are also instructions how to set it up on chrome. Here's the link: https://google.github.io/physical-web/try-physical-web#nearby

Micro:bit

I have lots of choices of hardware to use as long as I can attach a Bluetooth BLE module. I want to make it easy for everyone. Easy enough that it's just drag-and-drop. Easy enough that I can teach my kid how to do it.

That's why I decided to use the micro:bit. It has BLE Module that I can easily use.

First, create a shortened URL since Physical Web requires Eddystone-URL frame. Here's the link to specification: https://github.com/google/eddystone/tree/master/eddystone-url

Just go to https://goo.gl/

Paste the URL and it will get shortened. It would look something like: https://goo.gl/NdzJSr

Then go to https://makecode.microbit.org/

Click Javascript and paste this code. Change the URL.

input.onButtonPressed(Button.A, () => {
 bluetooth.advertiseUrl(
 "https://goo.gl/NdzJSr",
 7,
 false
    )
 basic.showString("Check IN")
})
bluetooth.advertiseUrl(
"https://goo.gl/1d8Ur8",
7,
false
)
basic.showString("Presentation")

I have 2 URL here. If you click "Blocks", it will look like this. What it means is that when the micro:bit starts, it will broadcast this URL https://goo.gl/1d8Ur8 which is my presentation. It also scrolls thru its LED the word 'Presentation'.

When I click button "A", it will start broadcasting the Check-In URL and scroll the word "Check IN".

Attach your Micro:bit device to the laptop using USB. I'm using a mac, there's no setup needed, it automatically mounts the device. Now we can just download this to our device to it. That's it. Easy-peasy.

I can easily keep track of how many people downloaded my presentation or use the link. I can go back to goo.gl

It even gave me a report.

Eventually this would be seamless, new phones will have the "Nearby" functionality enabled. Users will get notified when I enabled the device.

Why is this so awesome?

I tried this on our previous Hackster meetup and it worked. Lots of people checked-in and also setup their Hackster account, check it out.

https://www.hackster.io/live/hackster-dallas-fort-worth/events/67725

I can easily reuse the same code to other meetups, I don't have to install anything else. It's simple and cheap.

If this project made you interested in learning Physical Web, Beacons, EddyStone, Micro:Bit, goo.gl url shortener, or you're just having an awesome day, just click on the 'Respect project' button and follow me. If you replicated this, click the 'I made one' button, leave a message and give me feedback. I want to hear how this project helped you.

Good luck with your presentation.