A few years ago I became interested in electronic projects. I initially started tinkering with an original Raspberry Pi that purchased when they were first introduced and later moved to micro-controllers like the Arduino and Particle Photon (previously known as Core). My first projects were a set of Raspberry Pi thermostats and a Raspberry Pi deadbolt lock. Both of which could be remotely controlled.

After creating this blog I wanted a fun way to monitor visitors while at work. I wound up throwing together a Particle Photon I had lying around with a 7-segment display and some PHP to create this desk counter. It uses a PHP page that returns the count using a MySQL query. The PHP page is retrieved via the Photon and displayed to on the LED counter. Anything with blinky lights makes for a fun desk toy!

You can get more details (along with the code) on the project on my Hackster page here: https://www.hackster.io/mark-depalma/wordpress-visitor-counter-db3cf8