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Tribble Tamagotchi

A fuzzy ball with just one feature: It randomly cries for attention until you pet it, and then it purrs.

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The Tribble Tamagotchi is a project made for the DMG/Social Body Lab Texitle Controller Jam. It uses an Adafruit Circuit Playground Classic, a custom ball of fluff with a capacitive sensor and haptic motor inside it, and a small Python server to play sound FX.

The tribble is a pretty simple concept in that it only has two functions, which are crying when ignored, or purring when touched.

I had a fun time w/ the cap sensor in this board. Its nice to have that just built into something, vs using breakouts or fiddling w/ little pins. Also by just getting its raw numbers  and playing with a top and bottom range, I was able to detect someone touching the tribble through the fun fur, so I was able to hide the conductive fabric inside the fuzzball, vs having to place it on or through the fur.

Its currently on a minute long timer (because game jam timeline), but ideally it picks a random timer interval to start crying It has two vibration patterns: constant when crying, and a 400ms pulse when purring. The Circuit Playground chats to a small python server through the serial port, that handles the sound FX. Which were combed off of Freesound. If I get an express later on, I'd like to translate it to circuit python.

Future work: stronger motor so it bops around when crying, better sound playback. Clean up some code.

server2.py

Basic sound server (as is)

x-python-script - 1.65 kB - 06/16/2020 at 16:39

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432735__xpoki__alienbabycry.wav

Cry noise https://freesound.org/people/xpoki/sounds/432735/

x-wav - 133.93 kB - 06/16/2020 at 16:39

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85410__readeonly__bobbiepeaches04.wav

Purr noise https://freesound.org/people/ReadeOnly/sounds/85410/

x-wav - 174.53 kB - 06/16/2020 at 16:38

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cap_sense_tamagachi_seven.ino

Current Arduino code (as is)

ino - 2.53 kB - 06/16/2020 at 16:38

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  • 1 × Adafruit Circuit Playground
  • 1 × Piece of fun fur
  • 1 × Haptic Motor
  • 1 × Thread
  • 1 × Embrodery thread or string

  • 1
    Find Some Fur

    Find some fun fur and cut about a 6 inch square (it can also be a circle if desired)

  • 2
    Attach the conductive fabric

    I used an iron on fabric, but you could also sew a patch into the back. Make the patch big enough to cover a good amount inside the tribble, and make a tab that sticks out for the alligator clip

  • 3
    Add the haptic motor

    The smaller ones should work right from the pin of the circuit playground w/ no extra fussing, anything larger and you might need a diode + transistor circuit. Though you could also use that if you wanted a stronger pulse.  Solder it up (I used some silicon wire) and wrap the motor in something to keep it from setting off the cap sensor (i used some gaffer tape, and hot glue on the lead connections).

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Timescale wrote 06/16/2020 at 20:03 point

I have but one thing to say: Pfrrrrrrrr.. Pfffrrrrrrrrr...Frrrrrrrr.

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