Meet the fortune teller. It’s practice to predict information about a peoples life. For such a long time he has been traveling space back and forth and his divinations are dark, so be careful!
USER SIDE
In order to start, user has to “hi” or equivalent word like ”hello” in order to start conversation. After asking about your future, the fortune teller robot’s led lights turn on and this is the time you will get your printed fortune. Later, to en up the experience user has to say “bye” or equivalent word “goodbye”.
FABRICATION AND DESIGN
The fortune teller is made of a wooden box, covered by a metal mesh which represents the maturity of the fortune teller. Traveling space between time made it tired so I’ve given the box an old and weary appearance by metallic cover and with assemblage the crews of corner components outside the box. Before covering the woods, I’ve painted the woods with gold colored spray paint. This was the wood itself doesn’t appear behind the metal mesh’s wholes.In the beginning of this project, my intention was to used ultrasonic sensor for leds to turn on but as I will talk about it later on in this blog, it didn’t work well so I decided to keep it as part a design of the box, corresponding for eyes. To make the face bored over years by answering human’s selfish questions, I’ve gave the eyes a blase appearance with eyebrows.
The box has instructions over the front side. The instructions are simple and short. It includes how to start the experience and how end it. “Say hi, ask about future, say bye.” Instructions are handmade cut from black colored cardboard. Arduino is banded on the bottom of the box. Wires are hidden inside the box. Two cables are coming out of the box, one of them for powering the printer the other is the connection between Arduino and computer standard A-B usb cable.
As I mentioned before, my intention was to use 22 pieces of 5voltage led lights in the beginning of the project. So, I’ve opened 22 drill wholes on the top of the box. I’ve build a serial connection between the anodes and cathode legs of 22 pieces of led’s. I’ve spend a lot of time to build this circuit but appearently the led’s legs were touching each other inside of the wholes so it was making short circuit. I had to open the wholes much more bigger. So, I had to break everything. To avoid spending time, We’ve changed the idea of 22 pieces of leds to use a strip led. But this time, It wasn’t going to be light depending on distance. The led blinks before the message prints.
To change the led wholes that I’ve open with drill, I’ve laser cutted a rectangular space for lights to go out. For design concern, I decided to cover the wholes from the back of the wood with a red colored plastic sleeve. Because of it’s transparent the light would go out. And we’ve changed the color of the led to red from the Arduino code. But, I still think it’s not that clear to see the lights come off from the box. Maybe, I should have used another material.
Also when using ultrasonic sensor, the data I got wasn’t accurate. I’ve used the below code y adding a heat and temperature sensor to get more accurate data and it worked.But, unfortunately we couldn’t use it.
CODE
P5.js side of the code in build on Daniel Shiffan’s Speech Recognition code with P5.Speech.
The connection between Arduino and computer via serial communication with P5.serial control. Here you can see the Ardunio side of the communication.
https://idmnyu.github.io/p5.js-speech/
The code includes a library that can detect speech and console.log what it’s perceived. What we’ve done is to make three arrays. One of them includes keywords, which the code can detect if user used them. These keywords are selected by most highly used words when someone ask about their future. To give an example, people are generally use “health, love, job, career” kind of words. But you can think it’s a much on array for possibilities.
Second and third array includes the answers which then they will be printed on the Arduino side of the code. The second array is made of specific answer for use of certain words and the third array is made of abstract answers in case, any of the keywords are not used. It gives general answers like “Be a New Yorker, walk fast and get out” or “You know the answer”. I want to mention again, the robot’s concept is dark for Halloween is on the way. So, the responses are dark for entertain.
You can see the Arduino side of the coding side.
You can reach the P5.js part of the code below;
concept
Question: Am I gonna find true love?
Answer: You are gonna soon regret things you did for love. Think twice.
Question: When am I gonna die?
Answer:You are not gonna die in a week. The rest is unclear.
CREDITS
We got so much helped by residents in ITP in coding part of the project. So, I would like to thank you to everyone who helped us during this stressful 2 weeks. Huiyi Chen, Maxwell da Silva, August Luhrs and people that I can’t remember the names. I would like to thank my partner Elena Glazkova to share this experience with me.