For the first part of this project, while I am working on figuring out the physical materials for the painting, I don't need much in the way of processor power. To get started, I really just need to be able to turn a heater on and off by hand.

But once I get a basic physical build worked out, I'll want to start displaying some data, even if it is simple, like whether it's sunny or not. So I went through my box-o-parts, and found some good microprocessor candidates amongst the leftovers. I have a couple Adafruit Huzzah ESP32 boards, a SparkFun Thing Plus, a Teensy 4, a couple CircuitPlayground boards, annnnnd an Arduino Nano 33 Sense. I think I may use that one. It'll be overkill in this phase, but it might make an easier transition into the next phase since it can handle TinyML.

The next phase of the data display part of the project is to build and code something that will respond to a person in the vicinity of the painting. There are lots of possibilities - is there a person present? are there multiple people present? did the person say a "magic word"? is the person smiling? frowning? I suspect that a simple motion/presence detector will be a good starting point, but I am excited to learn more about what I can accomplish with something like TinyML or something else in that direction.

But for the moment, an on-off switch will do the trick.