Wedding Butterfly

An interactive butterfly for in your hair!

A friend of mine wants to marry like a butterfly! So she asked me to make an interactive butterfly on a hairpin, to put in it her hair. Is this possible, she asked? Of course this is possible! The biggest problem in hardware was finding a small servomotor, to be fitted on a hairpin.

The other problem in software was programming the ATTINY45 with interrupt and ADC converter (analog PIN) and PWM, for the servomotor. But since I have done that for you (reading and combining codes of others on the internet) you can just upload my code, and make variations.

Then start a production of butterflies and become rich! Because which woman wouldn't be married like a butterfly, there must be an enormous market out there!!!

Step 1 Components

components needed:

a hairpin! (just ask your girlfriend!)

butterfly (you can the ones on the picture at http://www.dealextreme.com/  )

servo motor ( the smaller the better, the smallest I found was at
http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=23_26&products_id=404
(There are smaller ones, see the comments!)

ATTINY45 (8 PINS, yes SMD, you can by this at www.farnell.com )
3mm LED (or even smaller, in any electronics shop like www.conrad.com )
LDR ( Light dependent resistor, under a euro www.iteadstudio.com but to be bought everywhere, nothing special)

one resistor of 4.7 kOhm, (small, for combining with the LDR)
some perspex, (for putting the butterfly above the servo motor)
some thread, (to get the movement from the servomotor to the wings)
some wire, for attaching the components
some PCB with copper you can cut with a knife, for mounting the ATTINY45 without EAGLE (although you can do this properly too of course)
batteries (total around 3V), so no extra resistors for the LED's are required
some paint used for models, making the hairpin and components disappear in the lush hair of the bride

Some components I had to buy especially for the butterfly were the glue and the polyester thread. (glue 3 euro, thread 60 cents on a local market)

Comments

[pintoc2]

A couple of questions. Does it matter what the rating of the LDR is? and it looks like you are using a total of 8 batteries is that correct or are there only 4?

[cloudifornia]

Very pretty. Just hope nobody tries to be helpful and shoosh the butterfly off your head! ;-O) 5 stars!

[ramkrishna]

Awesome application. How did You program the ATtiny45?.

[chicopluma]

relly cool, you really can trick the people with this

[allen]

Hobbyking has a servo a bit less then half the weight of the one you've got linked. It's design looks like it might work better as well:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=11735

Just in case the link doesn't work it's titled "HobbyKing Ultra Micro Servo 1.7g for 3D Flight (Right)".

It comes in right- and left-hand versions so I suppose you'd have to give that some consideration.

[contrechoc]

Thx great, although for this wedding it will be too late...there are minus 9 items in stock! But i''l come back to the link....

[cutshopguy]

Pretty cool.
I'd like to have a go at building this, but with zero background in electronic engineering a lot of the wiring instructions for the ATTINY and so on are gobbledegook. How about a nice, easy-to-follow line diagram and circuit?
I'm sure the lovely bride will look amazing!

[contrechoc]

I have added the schematics, the wiring should be clear now. Indeed the bride is very happy.

[moparman]

For some fine stiff wire, try some guitar strings.

[cjrush1009]

Thats really cool, but (sorry to burst any bubbles) but you can get an aliform monarch butterfly that moves with memory wire and a battery for 20 bucks. While its fun to build something cool there isnt much fun re-inventing wheels.

[lbrandstein]

Awesome!!! Would love to see the final product too. I would totally buy this for $10-15 too, depending on how nice/realistic it looked, FYI...

[Mr. Potato Head]

Not sure I'd categorize hiding fake bugs in the bride's hair as an "enhancement". Certainly better than real bugs, but still pretty gross.

To each his (or her) own...

[PunKRaBBit]

It's not like someone is going to do that with a centipede or something so there's nothing gross about having a mechanical butterfly in your hair.

[devonfletch]

I found some wire .007" dia, came from SS-wrapped auto hose, very flexible, about 3 lbs breaking strain.

Very handy to have about! Best way to harvest it is cut (w/Dremel) diagonally around the hose, half of the wire comes off in long lengths, half are short (being the ones you cut).

Shop around, I have found some hoses have a slightly bigger dia, and they are quite stiff. Auto wreckers have a selection, and it doesn't matter what condition the hose is in, you throw the rubber away, anyhow.

[youhearditherefirst]

This looks like a lot a fun! I'd totally wear it.

re muscle wire: it might be something to consider since you're using a small amount and the motion is small and subtle, but it's trickier than you think. We were discussing it on another forum and a colleague mentioned the following traits:

slow: depends on what you define as 'slow'. It's not super fast it's
definitely slower than your average solid state actuator, DC motor or
whatnot. I think it's response time would actually be quite nice for a
garment, but

hot: I haven't touched one yet, but they do get uncomfortably
warm/hot. My understanding is that it's actually the heat itself,
rather than the current that causes the reaction -- the current is
just a way to generate the heat. For his project, he was using about 8" of wire
--He's been told it's not hot enough to burn you, but still..

current: they draw about 2 A. He says his wire was 1500 mils thick,
which perhaps needs a touch more juice than the 1200 mil thick ones we
used to use.


But yah, think about it! You can get starter kits at robotshop.ca

[Polymorph]

You will want the thinnest muscle wire you can find. Properly made, the wings should present nearly no load at all.

Thinner wire means less power/current required, and faster movement. Not that even thin muscle wire is fast.

[drawkcab]

You should consider using muscle wire for this project...would be less bulky and you could get similar movement by building it into the wings.

[chakra]

you did it!!
two years ago my best friend had asked me to make one for her marriage. i couldn't get a break through in automating it.
but you have achieved it!!

[ChrysN]

Cool project!