Origami animated mouth

thingiverse

Arduino controlled mouth detects an approaching person, moves and talks. Parts list includes 3mm plywood, servo, Arduino, wire 1mm thick, two big crocodile hair clips, cable ferrules 2mm diameter for the bearing, small screws, washers. Optional parts include sound module, HC-SR04 module, speaker. Mechanics: The Arduino drives the servo. U-shaped wires connect the arms to servo. Arms rotate around M2 screws, slide between two wire rails. The crocodile clips hold the origami. I drilled 2mm holes in the crocodile clips and bolted it on the plywood arm, then soldered the ferrule bearing on it for the mover wire. Move the servo to middle position. Bend the connecting wires to U shape and experiment with the length until the position is right. Test it with the servo. When everything works well, bend the wire ends back to prevent them from falling out. The Origami_servo zip file contains drawings, the Arduino file and more. I used a 40W CO2 laser to engrave/cut the plywood parts. The base plate is decorated, after engraving the plywood remove the decor from the LYZ file and cut. How to make the mouth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGr4clgr46o How the Arduino works: Simple solution: Just take the Arduino servo example and move the arms as you wish. Limit the movement to about 90 degrees. The "deluxe" model however detects when somebody comes near, then the mouth moves and starts talking. When nobody is around, the HC-SR04 Ultrasound sensor averages how far is the first obstacle, e.g. a wall. When somebody steps in one-third of this distance, the Arduino fires up the servo motor, the mouth moves and the sound module plays the next sound sample. You may want to synchronize the moving mouth to the sound files, this is not difficult, just play with servo speeds and timings in the main loop. For debugging purposes, the code drives a 16x2 LCD, which can be omitted. An Arduino Mega 2560 was used, but any smaller Arduino could do the job. For the sound, I wanted to use first the Wtv020 module, but the DfPlayer Mini offered a simpler solution: Next button (IO2) connect to Arduino's A2 output and plays the next MP3 file when activated.