Say Loudly: Dispense Towel

The code for the "dispense towel" wakeword recognition is available here: https://github.com/BrainHu42/spencer-the-dispenser

The amount of towel dispensed is volume-adjusted.

We have successfully trolled someone!

Video demo here: https://vimeo.com/1063915896/1a0645efcb

We've finished the project, though we're still working on some optimizations to prevent the pulleys from getting stuck. The STL files for our 3D printed parts (pulleys, blue/grey core adapter, and motor mount) have been posted to Hackaday. Here's the editable Onshape file for the pulleys: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/380de83321b66506218ea3fa/w/c4c5e723950741839b369f04/e/5c50764f8d3d2605ba21e744

We'll also post the TinkerCAD links for the 3D parts soon.

While working on mounting our motor in the paper towel dispenser body, we decided it would make the most sense to connect it using a belt and pulleys. This prevents us from having to drill into the paper towel dispenser's plastic axle to fit the motor.

We got this belt from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098QH4MW3

and are using this design as the base for our pulleys:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cf7b858fb3c2f64bb9c06e22/

We're going to 3D print the gears and some of the required components for adapting it.

We expect to do a few revisions after the first print, but we're optimistic about the approach.

We've made good progress developing the components of our project. Here's the inside of the paper towel dispenser unit:We need to attach a motor here, which we're working on a plan for:

In the meantime, we've gotten speech detection software loaded onto our Pi that responds to the command "dispense towel." It uses Picovoice's wake word detection algorithm, and is available at: https://github.com/BrainHu42/spencer-the-dispenser

The paper towels we have readily available (Scott grey core) aren't compatible with the paper towel dispenser unit we were able to get (blue core), so we're going to 3D print an adapter.
We're not sure exactly what dimensions would be ideal. Since the adapter is pretty small and won't use much plastic, we decided to just print a tray of slightly modified adapter designs in hopes we'll get one that fits perfectly.

We've gotten controls for a test motor & motor driver to work.

We've ordered all the core components for this project. We'll be testing out the motor controls soon!