Check out my latest project Hacking Wearables for Medical Device Development. Hack a $35 Arduino compatible nRF52 ARM Cortex activity tracker to build low power devices. Currently, used to prototype wearable medical devices at MATTER Lab. Complete tutorials and code for accelerometer gesture recognition, neural network training, and 3D model control using Bluetooth.
Description
Adventures in soft robotics! A shoulder mounted inflatable air puppet that uses beat detection, an Arduino and banks of computer server fans to dance with the music.
DetailsBuild instructions
Step 1: Strip Down the Football Shoulder PadsRemove all straps and padding. Remove the shoulder plastic flaps. Cut out pleather to cover exterior shoulder pad surfaces. Glue pleather to stripped down shoulder pads (I use upholstery spray contact cement).
Once extraneous parts of the football shoulder pads have been removed and black pleather has been attached its time to start creating a shoulder mounted dance platform for our green friend.
Bolt the computer server cooling fans to the hinged wooden platforms - 4 fans on each shoulder. The fans should have at least 1.5" clearance underneath for airflow. After bolt holes have been drilled in the platform (when we know the positions of the fans) cut out a 1" diameter hole under each fan for additional airflow.
The base of the air puppet legs have to be flared and fairly wide to keep it from constantly falling over. I epoxied and taped hard pieces of foam to the front and back of each fan array. The shape and circumference of the combined foam-fan platform matches the size of the puppet legs.
I experimented with many materials and in the end the most effective materials for the air-puppet envelope was also the cheapest: extremely thin clear plastic trash bags. I created a pattern on paper, cut it out and traced over doubled up trash bag plastic. I then used a soldering iron (this will trash the tip) to cut the plastic while also welding the two layers together.
The bottoms of the puppet envelope legs are taped to the edges of the fan platforms
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