Trying to get it all to work out was pretty a pretty intense thought process. At least, it seemed that way relative to a Friday. Relative to a Monday morning, the thought process could be described as easy. The way Bubble Boy (lol) will rock back and forth, and from side to side is that there will be two servos embedded into the side of the bottom ball. On the servo horns will be string, which will be attached to a paperclip. From there, the paperclip plugs easily into the cross on the top ball.

The reason why I chose paperclips rather than anything else is because it allows more movement. For example, if the top ball moves to the left, the back and forth ones will not constrain this movement. Pretty neat, eh! I'll probably strengthen the cross tomorrow, after I replace the elastic string I used.

This brings me to another point. There isn't much string around, so the first thing I saw, I grabbed. Elasticy string. I thought it would probably work out, but it didn't. Tomorrow I'll replace it with bunchels of thread, or yarn - depending on what mood I am in. (Yarn is bigger - thread is smaller).

These photos show the progress of the process.

During the weekend, keep an eye out for:
- Blog post about Autism & Robots & Robbie
- Blog post (hopefully) about a working Bubble Boy
- YouTube video (hopefully) about Bubble Boy
- Blog post about a very fun Physics lab

Happy Friday night BUBBLE BOY!

Lucky for me – it was the EXACT colour I envisioned!

I also made the bottom part better, so it wouldn’t topple over that easy.

Enjoy the pics!

Hooray!

Basically what I did today was familiarized myself with how to program the servos with the Arduino more, and I made the two styrofoam balls interlock. This was done buy cutting an ‘x’ into both. On the bottom one, the x was concave. On the top one, the x was convex. They have some ability to move side to side and front to back. Tomorrow that functionality will improve after I trim it up a bit.

Hooray for virtual logbooks! ^_^

It was pretty fun. My soldering has gone waaaaaay downhill though. Hopefully I’ll get more practice in soon. Arduino and ArtBot contest entries are due in the end of April, so I better get moving. My plan is to make a new Robbie, incidentally called Pinky. I’ll somehow find a small microphone and speaker, and embed it in a physical pink snowman.

The coolest part about the ArtBot contest is that, if I am accepted, I’ll be able to go to Ireland on my birthday. I’m Irish, so that’s quite a huge ordeal! <:D

-> Oh, I received my comments today. And a crumpled certificate. Nice. Well, the comments were all positive, even the two in French.

I checked to see what the science fairs in Mass are like – they have a panel of professional judges. So I need not worry for the future!