Singing Lazy Susan (Crazy Adam) with Hand-made Sensor Brush.

Jean-Baptiste LABRUNE, Noah Vawter, and Aithne Sheng-Ying Pao are three people from MIT Media Lab who share the interest in food and music. We believe that having food together is one of the best ways people get to know more about each others.

We designed the Singing Lazy Susanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4PSgXDp64. Through the interaction with the Singing Lazy Susan, we found the eating patterns and behaviors unique to each person, which reflect our personalities and interests. The dining experience expands to a new domain.

Here we demonstrate how we made the singing Lazy Susan as an "introducing-yourself" tool or a "personality-reflection" interface at a dining table.

Step 1: Select materials

Considering your Lazy Susan will be holding your food singing and spinning happily, the material selection is important.

first of all, the board should be able to bear the weight of all the food and drinks, and should not be too heavy it self so that it can spin smoothly with food on it.

Second, to make later crafting easier, you should avoid choosing a material too hard to draw holes through.

We experimented with different materials and found that a 0.5 inch thick foam board is perfect for this!

Next step is to measure the size of nuts and find corresponding screws for later use.

Comments

[sorayamayu]

alo-hello~!!! I was thinking of copying your singing lazy susan for our project... it's really very hard to find the things that you used in your project like the arduino, and the foam board.... and all of the things you used in step 7.... i'm really having a hard time making our project... could you please provide me with some necessary items that can be bought anywhere with a cheaper price...? i really need an alternative since we're going to make our project as an automatic singing lazy susan.. we'll be using servos in order to make the lazy susan spin... could you suggest another alternative for that? since i've looked everywhere for a servo .... i didn't find anything... someone suggested that i should use a dynamo from a toy... but could that actually work? since the tray might be too heavy...

and also... someone suggested that i should even use a motor from an electric fan or from a ceiling fan in order to make it spin... my teacher told us that any engine's speed can be reset from slow to fast.. so... should i stick with this idea? since the materials are too hard to find?

kindly reply soon... i really really really need your help~!!!! i hope you can really help me though,... firthermore, thank you for working on with such a nice project~! it really really inspired me to do so much~!

LOVE,

Soraya Danica D. Dimayuga, age 16, from the philippines

[Luziviech]

Bought my own board from a private seller on ebay now, but there are also other sellers from Asia like China who sell those boards on ebay, even shields, partially without charging shipping costs; those guys seem to be international vendors, so i guess there'd be no prob for you to get one there.

[Aithne Pao]

Hi,

Thanks for your interest! Feel free to copy and modify this! I'm glad we can help! Here is the reply to your questions. hope it helps!

You can get the arduino board online : http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ I believe a foam board and materials in step 7 can be easily found in art/crafts stores.  We simply got most of them from a hallway of free/reusable pile. A servo should be good to make it spin. you can find it online or at stores like radio shark too. The foam is very light so I don't think you have to worry about the motor too much unless you want to put really heavy food on it.

[ls_hoohoo]

brilliant way to make that brush!

[shifty]

Aw, shucks, thank you! One extra secret is that we used a bench grinder to ground a little bit of a curve into the spring steel. It looks like the tip of a ski. But still we had to use the copper tape as well to make it very smooth.

[purduecer]

Crazy Adam? Why not a Crazy Ivan???