econoSpazzi

Videos (most recent on top):

1. econoSpazzi Dance Party
2. MAKE edited video of econoSpazzi
3. Original long-ish video

Update 2012-09-07: He's Baaaaack!

I revived econoSpazzi for Maker Faire. His code has been ported to the FetaDuino by Rocket Brand Studios. The LCD is great, and I built it into a nice acrylic frame and added a joystick.

A simple menu on start up lets you select Demo mode (seen in the econoSpazzi Dance Party video), Jumpstick mode (digital on-off control of the solenoids), and Smoothstick (analog PWM control of the solenoids).

You can vary the tempo during demo mode using the joystick. The joystick also allows you to control econoSpazzi's movements in Jumpstick and Smoothstick modes.

While I was filming Make: Live episode 12 with Becky Stern and Matt Richardson, I saw they had a Beatbots Spazzi. I love those things. Becky was really nice and gave me a set of the Makerbot printer parts. I was really stoked to make one.

However, when I looked up the other parts I would need, I saw that the solenoids they were specifying on the Makezine.com website were $18 each. That's too much for my wallet.

I knew a source for a similar solenoid for only $1.50 each. Thus, econoSpazzi was born.

Here's the site for the original Spazzi project on Makezine.com. I bought my solenoids from allelectronics.com (update: No longer available last I checked). They are rated for 24V DC, but I found that after I cut the included spring to size, they worked fine at 10-12V DC.