After some successes and some big failures the little guy is pretty much done. Even though I didn’t succeed in using capacitive touch as the main interaction with the speaker I am happy with the final outcome.
Here is the link to my tutorial: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Bluetooth-speaker-touch-sensor-hack/
and its come a long way from the original set of sketches!
The concept: A fun and interactive Bluetooth speaker aimed at vinyl toy lovers.
The process began with a lot of sketching in an attempt to figure out a direction. I decided that I didn’t want to design a speaker that looked like every other speaker out there, I set out to have fun in this project and and in the process use this as an opportunity to expand my 3D modeling skills.
Once I chose the design I loved the 3D modeling process began. This was a big challenge for me since I’ve never been really confident with my CAD skills. I had never set out to model and build a form that needed to house electronics. My biggest worry was that I would screw up the measurements and end up with a 3D print that was too small to hold all the inner parts.
After taking apart the existing speaker I measured all the components and based my design around those measurements.
Once the 3D print was done and cleaned I began assembling and wiring the speaker. I was planning on using my Flora board and capacitive touch sensing to bypass the Pause/Play button. With capacitive touch sensing would the Flora would know when someone would touch the body of the LittleMonster and send a signal to a resistor** that would complete the circuit usually activated by pressing the button.
What was supposed to be a relatively simple coding exercise quickly turned into a big challenge. Something that had been coded into the speaker’s original circuit board kept overloading and shutting down the entire system when I tried completing the circuit with the Flora. At first I thought that I was overloading the board trying to add all the new components at once, so I tried just activating the button using only the FLora and a simple code that would complete the circuit every 10 seconds. However, I quickly discovered that the speaker was previously coded so that if the pause/play button was held down it caused the speaker to disconnect the bluetooth.
After some consieration I decided that I needed to find another way to bypass the button that didn’t involve messing around with the existing board. From my success creating a simple switch for the Poopy-Light I decided to use the Monster’s body as a switch that would complete the circuit using copper tape.
