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Step 5How it works
The Fairy:
The fairy is a 180degree green LED with small clear fairy wings super glued to it. It's suspended from the top compartment of the case by a servo arm attached to the same flexible small gauge wire that powers the LED. The servo has a pseudo random sweeping pattern that makes the fairy bob up and down. At the bottom of the case there are 4 holes cut for 80mm computer case fans. The fans blow air up into the fairy compartment and since the fairy has wings it catches the wind and swings around in a random pattern in XY space. The servo plus the fans make for a pretty realistic flying pattern.
The Juicing Mechanism:
The crank on the outside of the case is attached to a wheel on the inside of the case that has small magnets on it. When you spin the wheel the magnets pass by a hall effect sensor which sends a signal to our Make Controller board. The make controller then sends power to our two opposed DC gear motors that are coupled to some all-thread rods. The fairy squishing walls are mounted on drawer guides for smooth action and the all-thread passes through a nut on the wall to actuate it inwards and outwards. There are limit switches mounted on the drawer guides as stops to keep it from over extending or retracting. The inside limit switches also signal that the walls are closed and trigger the fairy death sequence. Finally, we have a tunable peristaltic pump attached to the back of the machine that pumps and mixes ice cold sugar water with the absinthe.
Electronics and Software:
We used a Make controller board for doing the in and out which talks over OSC to a laptop running Max/MSP. This is totally overkill, but my partner David wanted to learn Max and it seemed like a good way to get started. The electronics are all off the shelf basic stuff. Here is a somewhat complete electronics parts list:
-hall effect for the wheel sensor
-limit switches for the drawer guides
-servo for the fairy
-green LED for the fairy
-DC gearmotors for the wall actuation
-Peristaltic pump to move the liquid
-Make Controller for analog/digital I/O
-80mm case fans to move fairy
The fairy is a 180degree green LED with small clear fairy wings super glued to it. It's suspended from the top compartment of the case by a servo arm attached to the same flexible small gauge wire that powers the LED. The servo has a pseudo random sweeping pattern that makes the fairy bob up and down. At the bottom of the case there are 4 holes cut for 80mm computer case fans. The fans blow air up into the fairy compartment and since the fairy has wings it catches the wind and swings around in a random pattern in XY space. The servo plus the fans make for a pretty realistic flying pattern.
The Juicing Mechanism:
The crank on the outside of the case is attached to a wheel on the inside of the case that has small magnets on it. When you spin the wheel the magnets pass by a hall effect sensor which sends a signal to our Make Controller board. The make controller then sends power to our two opposed DC gear motors that are coupled to some all-thread rods. The fairy squishing walls are mounted on drawer guides for smooth action and the all-thread passes through a nut on the wall to actuate it inwards and outwards. There are limit switches mounted on the drawer guides as stops to keep it from over extending or retracting. The inside limit switches also signal that the walls are closed and trigger the fairy death sequence. Finally, we have a tunable peristaltic pump attached to the back of the machine that pumps and mixes ice cold sugar water with the absinthe.
Electronics and Software:
We used a Make controller board for doing the in and out which talks over OSC to a laptop running Max/MSP. This is totally overkill, but my partner David wanted to learn Max and it seemed like a good way to get started. The electronics are all off the shelf basic stuff. Here is a somewhat complete electronics parts list:
-hall effect for the wheel sensor
-limit switches for the drawer guides
-servo for the fairy
-green LED for the fairy
-DC gearmotors for the wall actuation
-Peristaltic pump to move the liquid
-Make Controller for analog/digital I/O
-80mm case fans to move fairy
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