Bump fists over the internet with someone #ESP32 #MQTT #Arduino

Michael Ang set up a fist bump machine, which can be triggered remotely over a simple web page.

It’s amazing how much just a tiny amount of physical touch does for providing a sense of physical connection.

The communications uses MQTT, a lightweight protocol for connecting to small devices. The machine is controlled by an ESP32 microcontroller running Arduino code with a small servo. The Arduino connects to an MQTT server (I’m using shiftr.io) and receives messages that are sent from a web page to the MQTT server. The latency is very low – send a fist bump and the motor moves within milliseconds.

See the video below, the GitHub repo for the code, and the blog post for more.