And I'd love to tell you more about the elctronics, except I'm not an expert; it's one of the areas I had help in. And because we mostly worked on it in Rush's workplace, I don't have many pictures myself. I can say we were initially looking at an Arduino, but because it would need a sandwich plate to control the servos, and I hadn't taken those dimensions into account when making the head, Rush chose to build the controller himself. (And also as a prestige/learning project for himself.) I do have a detailed image with map of the circuit board, but I have to check with him first before making it publically available.
It's powered by a 12V generic RC battery, coupled with a really clever gizmo I've forgotten the name of that converts the signal to 5V, with minimal loss or heat generation. The LED strip is fed right off the battery, a 12V fan is powered by the 5V feed (noise issues - though I'm thinking of adding a 5V/12V switch for interacting/dancing); all the rest is powered off the 5V via the controller.
There's several functions built in that we're not using yet - gettting the basics right in time for EF was more important. There are options for readouts on temperature, battery life etc, but in this current head not really a way to display them. The eyes were cast with 4 LEDs each, wired in 3 pairs (top, L+R, bottom), so that it would be possible to add miniscule delays between the top and bottom LEDs, so that instead of binary blinking, you could have a more eyelash-like blink. We didn't get around to implementing that yet; currently all LEDs fade simultaneously.
I have three microswitches that are currently sewn into the neckflap, but I'm going to be relocating them to a hard surface, so I can operate them more easily with my paws on. One switch is on/off for the glowing mohawk (it consumes the most current but isn't visible in daylight and not always welcome in the dark either.) One is a pause/resume switch for the servo's controlling the ears. It's not on/off; even when paused, the servos are still operational to keep them in their current position. Finally there is one for a 'park' mode, where the ears reset to a default position (for storage), and after a short delay to toggle the pause, they will perform first a wake-up script and then resume with randomly selecting from preprogrammed motions.
The mohawk is done by adding a strip of thin aluminium on the resin mask as a heatsink (precautionary). On top of that two parallel lines of regular rgb LED strips are glued. The 'hairs' of the mohawk were made from nylon wire (fishing line) of 3/4mm, first gluing them together with hot glue, then cutting the bottom off for a smooth surface and better transmittance of light (got the idea from a wefting tutorial), and finally dipping them in boiling water to uncurl. Each b/w segment consist of 3 wefts, which were first hotglued into segments and then hotglued onto the LED strip. The colors were programmed manually, in a set sequence and interval.
I'll have a talk to Rush this weekend about photos, and if he is ok with being contacted for detailed questions. :) (You can always ask them here and I'll see what I can answer.)
And I'd love to tell you more about the elctronics, except I'm not an expert; it's one of the areas I had help in. And because we mostly worked on it in Rush's workplace, I don't have many pictures myself.
I can say we were initially looking at an Arduino, but because it would need a sandwich plate to control the servos, and I hadn't taken those dimensions into account when making the head, Rush chose to build the controller himself. (And also as a prestige/learning project for himself.) I do have a detailed image with map of the circuit board, but I have to check with him first before making it publically available.
It's powered by a 12V generic RC battery, coupled with a really clever gizmo I've forgotten the name of that converts the signal to 5V, with minimal loss or heat generation. The LED strip is fed right off the battery, a 12V fan is powered by the 5V feed (noise issues - though I'm thinking of adding a 5V/12V switch for interacting/dancing); all the rest is powered off the 5V via the controller.
There's several functions built in that we're not using yet - gettting the basics right in time for EF was more important. There are options for readouts on temperature, battery life etc, but in this current head not really a way to display them.
The eyes were cast with 4 LEDs each, wired in 3 pairs (top, L+R, bottom), so that it would be possible to add miniscule delays between the top and bottom LEDs, so that instead of binary blinking, you could have a more eyelash-like blink. We didn't get around to implementing that yet; currently all LEDs fade simultaneously.
I have three microswitches that are currently sewn into the neckflap, but I'm going to be relocating them to a hard surface, so I can operate them more easily with my paws on. One switch is on/off for the glowing mohawk (it consumes the most current but isn't visible in daylight and not always welcome in the dark either.) One is a pause/resume switch for the servo's controlling the ears. It's not on/off; even when paused, the servos are still operational to keep them in their current position. Finally there is one for a 'park' mode, where the ears reset to a default position (for storage), and after a short delay to toggle the pause, they will perform first a wake-up script and then resume with randomly selecting from preprogrammed motions.
The mohawk is done by adding a strip of thin aluminium on the resin mask as a heatsink (precautionary). On top of that two parallel lines of regular rgb LED strips are glued. The 'hairs' of the mohawk were made from nylon wire (fishing line) of 3/4mm, first gluing them together with hot glue, then cutting the bottom off for a smooth surface and better transmittance of light (got the idea from a wefting tutorial), and finally dipping them in boiling water to uncurl. Each b/w segment consist of 3 wefts, which were first hotglued into segments and then hotglued onto the LED strip. The colors were programmed manually, in a set sequence and interval.
I'll have a talk to Rush this weekend about photos, and if he is ok with being contacted for detailed questions. :)
(You can always ask them here and I'll see what I can answer.)
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