It is a functional ping pong balls launcher designed to be controlled by an arduino (or any other microcontroller). It uses a servo to dispense the balls and two motors with wheels to give speed and shoot them.
All the plastic pieces can be printed using an 3D printer and the bases can be done using a CNC or a laser cutter. Have a look at the thingiverse page: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29670
In order to build this you will need the following material:
Two servos
Two motors
Two o-rings
Two hinges
Bolts
Spacers
Motoruino (or any other micro-controller with an h-bridge)
Ping Pong Balls!
I've had it shooting people at Campus Party, as you can see on the second video. Thanks lumi for the footage :D
On the pictures you can see all the assembling steps.
This little shooter - mounted on any robot - gives a vivid interaction with the humans that come across.
On the Campus Party the louncher in combination with the Magabot was a spectacle for the audience. Lot’s of people stopped at our stand and got interested in our topic because of this louncher.
The robot wanted to play. The audience reflected that and started to play.
The precision and impulse of the louncher is incredible.
@all: XicoMDB gave me the launcher after the Campus Party, it’s in Shanghai now and waiting in our hackerspace for a good purpose.
Thanks XicoMDB for showing off the project with all the details. As I do not have time to use it for any of my projects I “donated” it to our hackerspace. The idea came up almost instantly, to use it for our planned periscope. It’s a remote controlled periscope with a cam and you can control it from distance via internet. The launcher could be a very good attachment. I will document the process and post it here, so we can see how your launcher performs in China
