I decided to have another "fridge props" moment in the shop, that's my line for props or devices made with leftovers from the fridge. I had spare 8 bit Arduinos left and some DF player modules (simple MP3 players controlled by a 9600 baud serial port). No CFX this time !

I used an existing model of a Groot Planter from here
https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/home/baby-groot-flower-pot

Printed in Eryone wood filament (PLA) and airbrushed green with a few accents. Then a simple planter design printed in marble PLA (Eryone too) to hide the electronics, along with a chopped off USB cable (I keep old ones in a box for that purpose). The electronics is crudely installed in the bottom planter with hot glue, the arduino programming serial port and the SD card still being accessible. I fed the SD card with a dozen of "I am groot" moments from the movies. The switch allows for changing the animation (which scrolls over several ones automatically every 30 repeats, and trigger the quotes. Finally an internal latching switch can disable sound totally in the case you don't want it while you operate the switch.

The arduino runs a simple animation sketch driving 18 addressable pixels with the Adafruit Neopixel library
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel

and one of the numerous DF player libraries
https://github.com/DFRobot/DFRobotDFPlayerMini

I made myself one too, to celebrate and installed it behind my Sony sound bar in the living room, which is offering USB flash drive MP3 playback, hence provides a hidden USB power source at the back of it.

Additionally, the baby Groot head got coated with Smooth-On XTC30 resin to seal the PLA and allows for planting aromatic herbs like chive or parsley after the xmas season !

Video quickie