Planet Arduino

Despite the title, this isn’t a tale of conversing with Michael Jackson’s chimp. Rather, it is about [KyungYun]’s machine that transforms speech into whimsical bubbles. While the speech control is novel, we were more fascinated with how the mechanism uses a system of strings to blow bubbles, along with the workmanship to make the device portable.

The rate of fire isn’t that great, so the bubbles appear to simply get larger the longer you talk. Essentially, the device increases the size of the iris — the part that blows the bubble — until you pause speaking. Then it burps out a bubble.

The iris mechanism has borrowed ideas from a much larger bubble machine, though the actual build is much smaller and uses both laser-cut and 3D printed pieces. A Teensy provides the brain, and there’s a pump for transferring bubble solution into the iris.

As best we can tell, soapy liquid drips down the strings which are touching. When the strings separate, it forms a soap film between them. A burst of air, then, can produce a bubble. It is possible to make colored bubble solution and we were trying to think of a way to make different colors for different kinds of sounds, although, having three iris mechanism would make the device much less portable. Perhaps it would be more practical to have multiple tanks of the solution and mix them differently based on sound analysis. In any event, this would be a fun project to extend with some creative additions.

We’ve seen more than one approach to blowing bubbles. If you want lots of bubbles, you might 3D print this contraption.

In order to resolve the problem of congestion at the entrance to their hackerspace, the minds at i3Detroit installed a motion-activated mechanical iris in their door’s porthole.

Grabbing the design online (which they are now hosting on their site here), the parts were laser cut out of wood, gold leaf was added for effect, and it was relatively easy to assemble. PIR sensors detect movement on both sides of the door and an FET resistor connected to an orange LED add some old-school science fiction flair. The iris is actuated by a 12V car window motor — which works just fine on the 5V power that it’s supplied with — and an Arduino filling in as a controller. Start and stop positioning required some limit switches that seem to do the trick.

Finally they laser cut acrylic plastic with the i3Detroit logo to complete the porthole modification. You can watch a video of the mechanical iris in all its glory here — but unfortunately it’s on Google+ (do people still use that??) so we can’t embed it in the post.

If you want to add this sleek idea to your home but lack a laser cutter (understandable), then you can still hack one out of some common household materials.

[via Evan’s Techie-Blog]