For my capstone project, I decided to create a very basic animatronic utilizing my skills with the Arduino Uno as well as my love of crafting and recycled materials. I have always been inspired by the ingenuity of Disney Imagineers, as well as the "Maker" style of creations I have seen through the show "Mythbusters" and on YouTube channels such and "Evan and Katelyn". I decided to base the design of my animatronic off of the Muppets as they have a simplistic puppet design that can be accomplished with easy to locate supplies, and don't necessarily focus on perfection. Based on my artistic skills, I knew I wouldn't be able to make something that looks realistic necessarily, but something fun and silly like a muppet felt like and achievable goal.
Through the process of my project's creation, I tested the limits of myself and my Arduino Uno that I was working with. I learned, often the hard way, that I was a bit too ambitious for the time allowed and power provided by one Arduino, so I had to break the construction and code down to simple steps that could each be executed individually before slowly combining and testing everything together.
Links included for materials purchased for this project.
-
1 Arduino Uno
-
1 Solarbotics SketchBoard
-
1 Recycled Speaker (from Value Village)
-
1 Large LED
-
1 Photoresistor
-
1 Pushbutton
-
1 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor
-
1 560Ω Resistor
-
2 220Ω Resistors
-
2 5xAA Battery Packs
-
1 Emptied Good Host Iced Tea powder container
-
Duct Tape
-
Electrical Tape
-
Hot Glue
-
Gorilla Glue
-
K'NEX (Recycled from childhood toys)
-
Velcro stickers
-
Recycled Black T-Shirt
-
Crayola White Model Magic
-
Styrofoam Half-Sphere
-
Recycled Cardboard
-
Multiple pieces of Felt
- Arduino IDE Downloadable here
- Arduino's Servo library GitHub Repository
- ArminJo's Talkie library GitHub Repository
- Light up LED nose and say warning based on amount of light
- Says a greeting and waves