A cool device that can recognise you, greet you while playing the song “jingle bells” and distribute chocolates.
We are now in Christmas week and many of you would have started planning for Christmas. To make this season full of joyful surprises, EFY brings you an exciting project series that will add more fun to your Christmas and New Year celebrations. Be it friends or family, colleagues or acquaintances, everyone can join in this season of giving.
Continuing with our Christmas and New Year series, here’s presenting a cool project to make called the RoboSanta Chocolate Distribution System that can recognise you and your friends, greet them with their names, play Christmas music and also distribute chocolates.
The project is based on a previous EFY project and has been slightly modified.
To begin, you need a face recognition robot that was built earlier.
Bill of materials for a chocolate vending machine
Preparing RoboSanta
First, construct the AI face recognition robot as per the instructions given in the previous project, the link is shared earlier.
Then modify its code and import the pygame Python module so that the robot can greet the recognised person with their name and play a Christmas song. Include a while loop to e-speak “Merry Christmas” followed by the person’s name.
Initiate pygame to load the Christmas song from the path where it is stored. You can change the path in the code itself. As a final decorative touch, place a Santa cap over the robot’s head.
Preparing the Christmas Gift and Chocolate Distribution Machine
To create a Christmas gift and chocolate distribution machine for RoboSanta, set up the box as follows.
First, place an ultrasonic sensor in front of the box. Then place a servo motor with an L-shaped lever inside the box such that when the lever moves, the box opens. Connect the servo motor’s VCC, negative and signal pins to 5V, GND and pin 9 of Arduino Uno, respectively.
Place the Arduino Uno and wires that connect it with the servo motor inside the box. Finally, put the gifts and chocolates inside the box, and connect the power of the chocolate distribution box with the RoboSanta. (see pic)
Schematics
Upload the following code to the Arduino board.
Testing
Congrats!! You have successfully built the smart RoboSanta Chocolate Distribution System. Now whenever someone comes near the box, the RoboSanta will recognise that person, greet them by their name, play a Christmas song and automatically open the box to present Christmas gifts and chocolates. Enjoy and have fun with your friends this Christmas and New Year.
You can also use RoboSanta for various other functions like birthdays, anniversaries etc.
