*Sorry I'm going to have to cancel, still debugging things and I won't have time to engage. Instead, I will make a youtube video overview once it's complete.
Let's make this Halloween contactless! With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, this Halloween is likely to look a bit different. To solve the issue of social distancing while giving out candy I figured, why not build a robot to do it!?! I'm going to hack a generic candy claw machine to dispense candy automatically to trick-or-treaters :D
Here's the plan this week:
- Hack in a Camera
- Mount PIR sensor
- Mount the microphone
- Load the candy in
- Test which candy works best to use with the claw
- Test all the hardware and make the next steps on the program
- Finish and test it!
The idea is to have the trick-or-treaters be able to interact with the Treat-o-matic to have it dispense candy automatically for them. We'll need multiple ways to detect people and interact with them. The program and functionality aren't written or developed yet, that's where you come in! Help me with the ideas to make this dream come alive :D
I also have the alternate goal of embedding a computer running ARC within all my new robots, Computer-based robots are the future!
Join the live chat and add your comments, ideas, and suggestions!
Check out our robot-building community at https://synthiam.com/Community
video does not work
Sorry, EzAng this Live hack was canceled as I ran out of time to do it. I don't think I can remove the video myself.
I spent the majority of Friday night and Saturday debugging the Treat-o-matic. Ultimately, it turns out that the claw itself struggled with picking up the candy I bought for it. During the process of trying different methods and scenarios to get it to work, I ran out of time to use it for a trick-or-treating application. A big fail on my part, but I'm not discouraged. These things happen when you are learning as you go.
I also ran into a couple of other issues, like the speaker still being noisy and the VFD display stopped working when the servos moved. I did get the claw to be voice activated and run an automated pick-up action that was repeatable, so not a complete fail!
This robot will likely appear in my next live hack, but likely for a new application.
I know you did your best, my friend.
I am happy you are not discouraged.
You already did so much.
EzAng
Hi Jeremie,
good luck EzAng