Bug Bite Bot

In a bustling park, there lived a beetle with a rather unusual name - Ringo McCartney. While the park echoed with laughter and festivities, as people joyously celebrated birthdays and shared picnics, poor Ringo found himself perennially overlooked on his own special day. Year after year, Ringo McCartney watched from the shadows as others revealed the warmth of companionship and the sweetness of birthday treats. But for him, there were no well-wishers, no gifts, and certainly no singing of renditions of "Happy Birthday." As time passed, a quiet resentment festered within Ringo's tiny beetle heart. Fuelled by loneliness and bitterness, Ringo grew with hate and anger and he had mischievous plans to exact his revenge upon the oblivious humans. No longer content in solitude, he stealthily infiltrated birthday gatherings, determined to claim his rightful share of happiness. With no lips he was left armed with his trusty mouth pinchers, he swooped in to liberate the coveted birthday cupcake from unsuspecting celebrants. Ignoring the lack of lips used for traditional candle-blowing, Ringo found a peculiar joy in extinguishing the flickering flames with his trusty mouth pinchers before devouring the cupcake itself. Ringo McCartney's waistline expanded with the indulgence of stolen cupcakes, each crumb a bittersweet reminder that on someone else's birthday, it was also his own. With each stolen cupcake, Ringo McCartney's bitterness melted away, replaced by a strange sense of contentment amidst the crumbs and wax.

Arduino Kit:

1x Active Buzzer

1x Arduino Uno Controller Board

1x Battery Holder

1x Battery 9V

1x Breadboard Mini

2x Female-to-female wires

2x Gears

1x Photoresister

11x Jumper Wires

1x Resistor 10k

1x Resistor 100

1x USB Cable

Material:

2x Nails

3x Plywood 3mm

1x Wooden Dowel

Tools:

Drill

Hot glue

Hot glue gun

Laser Cutter

Plyers

Sandpaper

Saw

Super glue 

Other:

Candle

Cupcake

Lighter

Teflon Self Adhesive Furniture Sliders

We programmed our system using Tinker Cad and Arduino IDE. First, we adjusted the sensitivity of the photo sensor based on the candle's brightness. Then, we added notes to play the happy birthday song before our angry bug pinches out the candle.

You can see how to make the circuit using the materials mentioned above and also if you want to download the code:

First, we start from laser cutting all the pieces on plywood to glue them later together.

The box pieces are like a puzzle and they interlock into each other. Later on, when we place the circuit inside, we glue the box pieces together and on the base.

Bug production is next! All the layers are lasercut and just need to be glues on top of each other in a way that the hole stays in center in order to be able to move the sensors, the servo motor or the claw grips to the top of the bug if needed.

The box is placed and hidden at the bottom of the bug, as the controller room or the brain of the bug.

The claw grips are the important part since it's the part where it pinches out the flame. We'll get to the assembly soon but they need to have the Teflon self adhesive furniture sliders on the tip to avoid burning the wood while pinching.

You can download this pdf here to have the lasercutting pieces to reproduce our bug bot:

Time to bring the circuit into the bug!

By having the box and bug ready, now we need to connect it to the circuit. The circuit already made on the small board as well as the Arduino board connected to a battery goes into the box at the bottom.

There is a small whole with the size of the photo sensor on the box. The sensor gets locked in there and connected to the board.

The important part is connecting the claws and setting the rotation of them to be able to pinch out the flame right on time after playing the birthday song. The servo motor is glued to the top of the box and connects to the gears on the claws with a small metal dowel to be able to rotate while holding the claws strong enough.

And that's it! The only thing left is to place the little birthday cupcake in the base and light it up to see what happens!

Basically everything doesn't always work the way we want it too.

Conceptual Idea: Our idea changed from a crab claw to a beetle and also figuring out how to bring our claw pinchers to not catch fire from the flame without human intervention.

Heat Sensor: We first tried to use the heat sensor but realized quickly that this sensor isn't accurately due to the sensor not being able to detect the flame from the distance we wanted it to be able to detect from.

Photo Sensor: To be able to use the photo sensor it depends on the light thats in the room so we tested out a range to be able to distinguish the light from the room and the light form the flame.

Gears: To be able to put out the flame with the pinchers of the beetle we needed to makeshift a second servo motor by attaching rod and gears to be able to have 2 pinchers move on 1 servo motor.

Buzzer: We realized after you put the buzzer inside the box it blocks off a lot of the noise so you really got to listen closely to be able to hear it.

Arduino Memory: The code also sometimes was either too sensitive or not sensitive enough to the light depending on the room you are in with the sensors which made it hard to document at some points having to work around the different kinds of lighting here at Daniels.

Laser Cutting: We had a few trial and errors working on the bug with figuring out how to scale it in a way that would work with the box that we originally made.

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Now you might be thinking... Where am I suppose to use this useless robot? First literally anywhere (preferably a more shaded area) at any day. Celebrating a birthday? Pull out the Bug Bite Bot. Need a best friend? Pull out the Bug Bite Bot. Want a pet? PULL OUT THE BUG BITE BOT!