This project began with a question about automatically logging hours for the Invention Studio at Georgia Tech's waterjet. Knowing how long it's in use and at what times helps us justify further funding for the machine and the makerspace in general. The waterjet computer is intentionally not connected to the internet and the software doesn't have an easy way to export hours anyway so making a small script just for it wouldn't work. Instead we decided to make a general purpose part that could be attached to any machine and with a little bit of software tweaking let us report when it's turned on and when it's actually being used for machining/printing/lasering.
The initial proof of concept prototyping is being done with a Pi Zero W since spares were laying around but the final part would need to be as cheap as possible meaning some small custom PCBs would be made for the ESP8266. The Pi Zero's Broadcom BCM2835 isn't something that a PCB can easily be fabricated for, consumes a lot of power, and is orders of magnitude overkill for this project. The ESP8266 consumes less than half the power and is a much simpler device, making PCB fabrication far easier.
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