Our project centers around the idea of finding substance in a world where Coca Cola can steal ground water, use fossil fuels to ship their products around the globe, and still have a polar bear as an advertising mascot. The eye flower continuously moves, looking out at the surrounding environment and avoiding contact with the Coca-Cola advertisements.
Technical Notes
The advertisements are suspended by metal wire which runs into the Arduino’s ground pin. The flower is hooked up to a pull-down resistor and given five volts. When the wire wrapped around the stem touch the grounded shapes, it sends a signal to a digital input pin (pin 2). This allows us to detect movement and send the flower in the reverse direction.
Above: Parts used are Arduino, breadboard, two servos, high resistance resistor (10k ohms), switch. Two wires (probe and ground) run out to their correct respective mechanical components.
//setup servo variables and values
int val_up = 90;
int val_down = 90;
int inc_up = 1;
int inc_down = -2;
const int lowerbound_up = 5;
const int upperbound_up = 110;
const int lowerbound_down = 5;
const int upperbound_down = 180 – lowerbound_down;
const int contactPin = 2; // the number of the pushcontact pin
long lastContactChangeTime = 0;
long noMoreChangeDelay = 3000;
pinMode(contactPin, INPUT);
}
void loop()
{
// read the state of the switch into a local variable:
int reading0 = digitalRead(contactPin);
delay(10);
int reading1 = digitalRead(contactPin);
int reading = reading0 & reading1;
The flower’s movement is the result of two servos controlled by an Arduino. One of them alternatively rotates clockwise and anti-clockwise. It rotates a disk, through which a shaft sits. The second servo sits on top of this shaft and supports and controls an arm. Thus we get trace out a spherical path with the two servo arms mimicking the longitude-latitude system. The shaft and the top servo are balanced with the help of multiple acrylic disks that rest on low-friction spherical balls.