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Blinky Head

A project log for Blinky, the Companion Robot

Blinky, a robot, lives with you, feeds itself and will--when asked--report that you have been seen moving around.

mike-rigsbyMike Rigsby 03/31/2017 at 20:050 Comments

Blinky's head started as a "flying saucer toy" design for Santa's Shop (Santa's Shop will be upgraded and placed on public display in the Brightway Insurance window in Gainesville, Fl during December of 2017). I tried to make the flying saucer "float invisibly" using magician's thread (which is pretty darn hard to see), but the thread will only support about 1.5 grams of weight. Instead of floating, the flying saucer will "rise and land" by means of a linear actuator (under construction right now).

I have digressed. Blinky's head is composed of a lower piece as shown below:

The holes for the leds are a little small and need to be drilled or reamed out. Using wire wrap wire, I connected eight multicolor fast blinking leds in parallel, then pushed them through the holes in the base piece.

I soldered the wire wrap wires to about 10 inches of connector wire and drilled a hole in the bottom of the base through which the connector wires are routed.

Print the top of the saucer head:

Print the camera base:

Melt (use soldering iron) the camera base to the top of the saucer (head).

Melt the top of head assembly to the bottom of the head.

Fasten the camera to the camera base using M3 x 12 machine screws and nuts.

Fasten the head assembly to Blinky's chassis by melting the pieces together.

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