Project: Swimming Octopus
When first hearing about the prompt, I thought of the idea to create an octopus that would “spit out” ink when someone got too close, thus illustrating fear. I started along on my project with creating a laser cut octopus with two detached tentacles and an ink splotch with the intention of using servos to move the tentacles and ink splotch with servos. I then constructed my circuit and wrote my code and tested them without much difficulty – I had no real hardware or software bugs this time as the circuit was rather simple: the two tentacles would sweep constantly, unless someone came too close to the IR sensor which would trigger the ink splotch servo to spin out from under the octopus.
However, when attaching my pieces to my servo, I found only devastation. The pieces were far too heavy to move by the servo. Unfortunately, with the time I had left to complete the project, I thought the safest solution was to recreate the mechanical pieces by simple paper cut outs. In the end, I got a working project; however, it was a very unsatisfactory conclusion. If I were to redo this project again, I would either try again to maybe laser cut out cardboard pieces, as well as create better enclosures for the motors and the circuit so the servos would not create so much ambient movement.
Zip File of Project: Motors Assignment
Youtube Video of project: https://youtu.be/99TpKd8yPhw