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I was looking for a gift for my friend’s son, who’s about a year old. I realized that everything I was looking at was just various enclosures with chips that made sound and light…that’s the kind of crap I can do!
So I built a theremin-type thing. It plays notes based on how close you are to its ‘eyes’, which are an ultrasonic distance sensor, and the nose is a small speaker.
Video:
Build log after the break.
I prototyped it on a breadboard with an ATtiny85 (the little 8-pin thing). It worked fine, so I slapped it onto protoboard with some female headers so I could plug in and make changes.
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The case is made of a 6 inch length of 2×4. I sliced it longways twice on the bandsaw, then bandsawed out a cavity in the middle piece in order to make a box. Two holes for the ultrasonic “eyes” plus one for the speaker “nose”. I jammed a switch on the side and spliced in a 9V battery terminal with a 7805 voltage regulator.
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The battery didn’t want to fit, but a dremel fixed that.Image may be NSFW.
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I decided to add an indicator light late in the build, so I spliced a resistor and some thin wire onto this LED and heatshrunk the joint. This got soldered straight onto the board, which quickly became a nexus of solder blobs.
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I realized too late that I needed a pullup resistor on the reset line, so I just slapped one on the back of the board. While I was there, I figured I’d add a decoupling capacitor.Image may be NSFW.
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Jamming it all in there. In order to keep the ultrasonic from slipping back, I put dollops of hot glue on the back so it would rest against the back of the case.Image may be NSFW.
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My highly well-planned circuit diagram.Image may be NSFW.
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I woodglued the front to the middle, and hotglued the speaker into the cavity.Image may be NSFW.
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After a lot of trial and error trying to secure it with wood screws, I switched to 6-32 machine screws with tee nuts.Image may be NSFW.
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Here’s a video of it in action:
In order to paint and finish it quickly, I stole this dude’s finishing technique and held the piece up with some nails in wood.Image may be NSFW.
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I painted it with these paint markers I got a while back.Image may be NSFW.
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A test paint on a scrap of wood.
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Preparing to paint the real thing.
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The planned art sketched out.
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Painting!Image may be NSFW.
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Dog!Image may be NSFW.
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Preparing to finish it with spray lacquer, again based on this guy’s technique.
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Removed the ultrasonic and put a woodscrew in the nose to protect the speaker.
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First coat.Image may be NSFW.
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Here’s the finished Pandaphone right before I wrapped it:
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Christmas day, time for unwrapping…
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Does he like it???
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He does!
Hello? Yes, this is baby.
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PANDAPHONE REVEAL YOUR SECRETS!!Image may be NSFW.
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Video: