Hi,
I am a new member to Letsmakerobots and so far I am very impressed with the site, the people, and the projects. I hope to learn and share with you all in the facinating and rapidly developing field of robotics and AI.
I am new to electronics as of several months ago after getting the Arduino starter kit. After working through the examples and trying several small projects I had the opportunity and idea to make animatronic figures for Halloween at my house. As a fan of minecraft I was inspired by the simple form of the characters (rectangular of course!) and thought they would be an easy way to start simple.
My initial vision was to have many life-size interactive animatronic minecraft characters outside the house along with supporting props (cubic glowing moon on the roof, jackolanterns on fence posts, flickering torches on the walls, minecart and tracks etc.)
However, time, knowledge and budget proved limiting and so I ended up focussing my efforts on one character, the simplest to build, THE CREEPER! :)
My idea for THE CREEPER (now known as Curt) was to have him on the porch and interact with the kids. I wanted to make it from translucent plastic so an explosion sequence could be lit up from the inside with bright leds and also have sound and movement capabilities. Ideally I wanted it to be mobile, I decided on a tracked platform, with animatronic feet suspended above it from the body to appear as though walking. I came up with a myriad of other possible features but decided to settle on just a few due to limited time (only a few weeks).
So the idea was to have Curt move around on the porch and look around (rotating head), and using proximity sensors, detect when a human was too close, and then start an attack routine, where it would make the fuse noises and move towards the person and start flashing leds. The person could then stop the attack by hitting Curt with a sword, the creeper would detect the hit and react and move away. If enough hits scored then do a death sequence with red leds, sound and movement. If Curt was successful then activate the explosion sequence.
That was the amount of features I decided to try to implement. I was unable to implement most of even these so suggestion for co-beginners dont try to do too much at once, and don't be afraid to cut back.
I will post my design and build process here for anyone interested in the project. I have a long list of possible features I'd like to discuss i'll also post. I'd like the robot to be highly interactive and a test bed for ongoing development of novel features.
And if I don't say individually - Nice to meet you!
Current Equipment:
Structure:
1/16" thick clear polycarbonate figure w/ acrylic rod angle bracing.
1/4" thick clear acrylic base
Laminated inkjet printer paper skin
Control:
Arduino Uno R3 SMD programmed through Arduino IDE
Adafruit MotorShield v2
Code: Current code for demonstration of head movement and lights explosion routine:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-jN2Adg-YnuQ09kWkRTS2RBdHc
Power:
12V 3A-hr battery from Talentcell
Actuation:
Std. Servo for head rotation
2W white led board and driver board w/pwm dimming
3W red led and driver board w/pwm dimming
sn400 tank chassis from Sinoning
Inputs/Sensing:
Bluetooth input from smartphone using HC-05 receiver
