Making Toys

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  naims641 6:05 am on May 23, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Bluetooth LED Matrix 

  I created an LED Matrix that is controlled by my iPhone via the serial port and a Bluetooth Shield on my Arduino. The initial idea was to make it so that the user was able to draw whatever they liked on their iphone and it would show up on the pixels of the LED matrix, and they could make frame by frames to make an animation. I was unable to get to that goal and it is instead is able to decipher and display text. This is could be something useful in various situations, like communicating across offices, or at a restaurant with the staff and other customers, or in a vehicle to other vehicles.

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  naims641 6:39 pm on April 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Role Prototype Ideas 

   

  I have been thinking about a few different things I would like to do for the final assignment, but I have not been able to narrow it down to one just yet.

   

  My first idea is to have a remote control car with a camera strapped on it like a drone that I can control using my phone. There will be four servos, one continuous servo for each wheel and two to move the camera up and down and side to side.

   

  

   

  My next idea is to make an LED matrix, possibly 10×10 that is controllable by my iPhone. I would be able to draw the pixels on my screen and see the direct translation onto the matrix.

  

   

  I have also been considering the possibility of purchasing a toy, like a teddy ruxpin or a furby and taking it apart to make my own toy from it that would be controlled through my phone.

  

   

  Or maybe make a hexapod like this one I found that has really nice motion when it walks.

  

   

   

  and lastly I have been considering making some sort of robot that I can wake up and control its head and eyes and some other features.

  I still am not sure which direction I want to go but these are all things that I have been considering so far.

   

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  naims641 6:15 am on April 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  The Waiting Hand, a physical representation of the time we spend waiting, and a tool that can be used and carried with us around the home while we run errands, waiting for our files to download before we are signaled to return to use our computers.

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    eating healthy diets 2:38 pm on June 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

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  naims641 8:18 pm on March 21, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  I was surprised at how challenging this project was to make. I spent all weekend working on it until it was near completion. Then on monday I continued to work toward making the finishing tweaks and realized that it was not working so I spent the next two days working on it all day and night long, past sunrise, I even ended up missing two of my other classes because I was working on the project instead. It was really challenging to get the gears to work with the poles that are pushed up, because they instead would try and move around in a circle with the gear rather than be pushed the direction I wanted, so I had to create a new edge for the gears to smooth them out so there is less friction, as well as create a deeper hole for the poles to stick through to insure they go the right direction, and create another boundary to stop the poles from sliding and lastly used a string to pull the poles in one direction so that they do not move with the motion of the gears. There was a lot more debugging than I anticipated and at times I thought it would never work and wanted to abandon the project and try something else. In the end I was not able to use the hand that I initially created, which was made out of plastic tubes, because it was too rigid for my platform, nor was I able to use the second hand I created, which I made out of museum board, but I ended up with a third hand made out of card stock so that it was light enough to be moved by the moving sticks. In the end though I am happy that I got it to work and think that the mechanism is really cool. That is what initially drew me to doing this project in the first place, I wanted to pursue a design that involved making a mechanism that transforms one type of motion into another, rather than just sticking a motor to something and making it spin, and I was successful in doing that. I think what is most important is really the time I spent making endless tiny tweaks to my mechanism to get it working to the best of my ability. I learned some ways that I could have improved it that I would not have thought of, and I solved issues that I never anticipated occurring.

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  naims641 9:05 pm on March 14, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Image Post 

  

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  naims641 9:19 pm on March 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Embedded Arduino Paper Automata Projecty Journal 

  When working with this project I had a few issues that I stumbled over. At first, for a very long time my Arduino was acting up, it would never fully upload a sketch and kept saying that I was not connecting to “Leonardo” correctly, while I always had Arduino Micro chosen. This continued for hours, I uploaded maybe 60 times and once out of the 60 it would properly load, but then it would stop. I at first thought it had to be a problem with my connection or code, but after working through it I realized that everything I had was right, and it must be a bug in my Arduino because when I came back to it another day and continued to fiddle I realized that it would upload as long as in the middle of the upload I told it to check if the code was correct.

  Before I started the project I new that I did not want to merely copy the example in the book but I wanted to adopt it and make something from it. So I kept looking at the motion trying to figure out what else it could be that would make sense with a range finder and thought that a horse or a dog that sped up when its competitors got close in a race made sense so that is what I decided to make. I knew that I didn’t want to just slap another figure on top of the motion from the structure, but wanted to integrate some sort of new movement into the structure, so I built hinges at the dogs knees so that they would bend as he ran. Building this dog actually took a lot of time because I had to start with different models and see if they worked and modify them until I made something that actually bent at the legs. It was also a bit of a challenge to figure out how to get the dogs legs to bend, and I still think that movement could be improved. The challenge I have is that I have to build the whole thing first to see what its movement is like, then take it apart and do it again which ruins aspects of the model in the process.

  Overall however, I wouldn’t say the assignment was a very difficult one that really used all of my brainpower, but rather it was one that just took a lot time and experimentation to overcome the challenges that presented themselves. For instance, I could have never predicted the problems that arose with loading the sketch to my arduino, and I had to take apart the structure to make sure everything was wired properly, which took a tole on the structure when it was rebuilt. I do think that if we were given this assignment again I would instead of using the mechanisms from the book, try and translate the servo motion into other motion in my own way with my own materials.

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  naims641 9:09 am on March 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Arduino Micro Paper Toy 

  I modified the paper toy of the stork into a race horse (or maybe a dog). The rangefinder points behind it, so that it only speeds up as other people come closer to it. It stays still if nothing is close enough to it as it knows it is in the lead, but once it feels threatened that other members of the race are getting close to it it picks up its speed.

  Process Pictures:

  

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  naims641 8:56 am on March 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Bio 

  I come from a Graphic Design background, and while I really enjoyed it, I felt like there was more to life than just doing print work and I wanted to branch outside of that. I wanted to be working making tangible objects you could hold and touch. I have always aspired to start a toy company, so when I saw that this class was being offered I jumped on the opportunity. I more specifically wanted to make plush toys, and knowing that Yuri has a background in toys was really curious about how to get your toys made once you have created a prototype. This program being technology based has really got me to think of how I could integrate technology with the toys to make them responsive to interaction. Growing up I can not think of many toys that I would regularly be playing with besides the fads that came and went like yo yo’s and pong, but the one things that I didn’t loose interest in were my stuffed animals. The toy that I was most impressed by may have been a Furby, and it is a toy I still think has a lot of interesting aspects to and would like to create something that builds from where the Furby left off. These days, I seem to not really have any toys outside of electronics, the two things that I play with regularly are my computer and my phone, but outside of that I don’t have much that I play with.

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  naims641 6:57 pm on February 28, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

  Paper Toys 

  My first paper toy was a set of chickens, but unfortunately before I was able to get home to document them they were trampled and took a beating. I restored them for the image below, and took a video prior to completing the the setup, as a test run, which can be seen after the image. 

  

   

   

   

   

  For the next toy I was thinking about how I can use the ultrasonic range finder and have it make sense, so I came up with the idea of a baby bird being fed by its mother. It gets excited whenever its mother is near with a worm so it jumps up and down and I made a slight modification so it opens and closes its mouth to eat the worm, the closer you are the more excited the bird gets. When you are out of range the bird saves its energy and waits patiently.  

   

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