Pepi Ng

NYC-based creative technologist,
designer and community organizer

Home

About

Love Messengers

Love Messengers are two devices that can communicate with each other no matter how far apart in the world they are. The perfect gift for friends, family and loved ones!

An open-sourced project for everyone to try out!

Collaborators

Julia Daser

Recognition

Gave workshops at:
- SIGGRAPH Labs 2024 (30 Jul 2024, 31 Jul 2024)
- Parsons Dorkshop (16 Sept 2024)
- NYC Resistor (21 Dec 2024, 9 Feb 2025, 14 Feb 2025)

- ACM Published and Peer-Reviewed Research Paper

Timeline

Summer 2023 - Current

Documentation

GitHub Repository and YouTube Tutorial to make your own pair of Love Messengers
(Refer to “Workshops” section of this page to find GitHub Repositories for specific workshops)

How it started - Our first iteration

We wanted to make a birthday gift for one of our friends who’s in a long-distance relationship. We thought it would be a great idea to gift her something that allows her and her partner to communicate that they were thinking of each other in real-time, no matter how far apart they were. We were inspired by MOMA’s Lovebox Messengers, and wanted to recreate the same concept, but with more afforable and accessible hardware and materials.

Electronics and real-time database

We knew that ESP32 micro-controllers had wifi capabilities, and we started researching into how two ESP32 micro-controllers can send data to each other in real-time.

After researching a loooong while, we came across this tutorial, “ESP32: Getting Started with Firebase (Realtime Database)” by Random Nerd Tutorials. This taught us how to allow two or more ESP32s to communicate to each other via a real-time data base- in this case, Firebase by Google. We tested it out, and it seemed to work really well and the two ESP32 micro-controllers could send and receive signals to each other fairly quickly in real time!

Julia and I trying to figure out how to connect ESP32 to a real-time database

Fabrication + Hardware

We wanted the form to be simple and effective! We decided that the simplest way for users to show their communication to each other is through a simple LED that goes off every time each user presses a button on their end.

To keep the devices also simple and intuitive, Julia started 3D modelling the encasing for the Love Messengers. We decided that the button can just be housed in a simple, cubiod encasing, and the LED can shine and diffuse through transparent heart pieces.

Labelled exploded view of our first iteration of Love Messengers

YouTube Tutorials

We spent a lot of time researching on how ESP32 micro-controllers can send data to each other in real-time, and we tried many different strategies that all didn’t seem to work! After we finally got it from Random Nerd Tutorial’s documentation, we decided to create a YouTube video inspired by their documentation as well.

Following up on the previous video, we decided to also make our first iteration of Love Messengers open-sourced and completely accessible to the public! So we decided to create a YouTube tutorial and GitHub repository on that as well.

All 3D models, code, wiring diagrams were all uploaded to the GitHub repository for anyone to try it out.

Pepi Ng

Love Messengers

Love Messengers are two devices that can communicate with each other no matter how far apart in the world they are. The perfect gift for friends, family and loved ones!

An open-sourced project for everyone to try out!

How it started - Our first iteration

Electronics and real-time database

Fabrication + Hardware

YouTube Tutorials

Iterations

Workshops:

Attended our workshops? Here’s our GitHub Repositories for all of them!

Anddddd some photos!

Siggraph (Jul 2024)

Parsons Dorkshop (Sept 2024)

NYC Resistor (Dec 2024)