Every birthday, my daughter asks for a treasure hunt and each year, they seem to get more and more elaborate. This year, we made an electronic “guide”. This little Acorn shaped robot head is missing all the parts of his face, and she needed to find each of them somewhere in the backyard. When she inserted a new found eye or nose, the controller would move on to the next clue to help her find the next piece. Once she put the face all together, a servo opened a door at the side of the head and she retrieved the “golden acorn”. Oh and yes, there was a backstory that made it all make sense.
Each part was made of something I found in the workshop that could be wired up to act like a switch.
Old VGA connector for the right eye
Reed switch and magnet embedded in the back of the left eye
scrounged AC plug for the nose
brass thumb tacks and some conductive tape (behind the moustache)
an old phone connector for the right ear
The left ear was a 3d printed lock with the lasered “key” which closed an internal switch.
Design Fusion 360
Coded in CircuitPython for the Adafruit CLUE you see in the picture
3d Print was done on Zortrax m200 (a great printer!)
And of course my Glowforge
It took a good deal of 3d printing than laser cutting, but I thought this group might find it interesting!
The controller and screen was an Adafruit CLUE board with a microbit slot connector. The code used a finite state machine to guide the screens one to the next. The servo was a standard hobby servo.
I have a friend who just finished writing an Oz based D&D world - I totally sent her this because this looks straight out of Oz! Even not knowing what the acorn was for, that particularly makes it for me
WOW! Amazing. She had to be amazed by this. As you mention getting more elaborate every year, you have to up your game further next year! Technology and art combined!
