Just so people who are easily startled are aware, VHS has a new greeter. Baby Butterscotch the security/welcome horse. Located in the upstairs front lobby.
Skin it, cut it in half, paint it gold and mount it to a plaque and connect a microcontroller with a triforce of PIR sensors to it, add some neopixels and relays to trigger the capacitive touch sensors on the side of the horse and you have whatever the heck this is.
Its set up to stay awake for 25 seconds after the last detected motion and stay asleep for at least 20 seconds. This is adjustable, I will post the code to github at some point.
It has a microphone so when awake it will respond to music and high pitched voices (they knew their target market). Also the capacitive sensors on the head are functional so give it a pet on its copper stars and hearts on your way by.
If its driving you nuts, it can be unplugged, no harm in unplugging it at any time or plugging it back in. Runs on 6v and I labelled its power supply.
This is just more fabulous that I could have ever possibly imagined. I love it. Looking forward to shrieking at it in a high-pitched voice next time I’m at VHS. The gold is also very excellent.
So update, the horse has gone mute. That was fun and got a whole 10 days out of it. The motors and everything else still work, just no whinny’s.
Doesnt look like sabotage (but if so, props for not leaving obvious evidence, I was expecting a cut wire or a screw driver through the speaker )
Got busy with the video wall build but I’ll have an investigation launched when I have some cycles, until then enjoy the blissfull whir of motors to greet you.
Oh and give the pony a pet, its gotta be rough losing your voice in such a public role.
Good news everyone, the pony is back!
It had apparently broken a speaker wire, got that fixed, and then hackspace happened so now its got a new speaker, and a switch, and a speed hole. The new speaker is a bit quieter (8ohm speaker with an 8ohm resistor to replace a 16ohm speaker) but eh its working.
Bad news everyone, the pony has developed a bit of a twitch. Seems like the head motor has lost its postion sense so it just keeps spinning forever. Fun fact, one motor does the ears, eyes, and neck. Value engineering! Anyhoo with the sensor thingy pooched it makes the pony act like a neurotic thoroughbred before a big race. I have hidden the powersupply until I get a chance to operate.
Good news everyone, its back! Turns out it broke another wire internally, I fixed it and hot glued the crap out of everything so hopefully it doesn’t happen again. (Honestly thought I wasnt going to get to it for a while…)
Also check this out, this is how you control the eyes, ears, mouth and head tilt off of one motor cheaply. The metal contacts are on the motor and spin with it, the circuit board is the contact traces. Depending on which are shorted it knows where the shaft is.
So something is up with the body motor (the one that moves the head from side to side and tilts it). Doesn’t seem to be an issue with the motor, postion encoder or wiring so I am guessing the motor driver is pooched.
rsim figured out its a clone of this bastard: https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Fairchild%20PDFs/FAN8100N,MTC.pdf
Going to investigate further, but until then the pony will whinny and wave its ears but not move much more than that.
Bonus shot inside the body motor, you can see gearing to tilt the head, there is even a hidden bevel gear underneath to power a shaft that drives the neck rotation. Note the cool movement cam track thats linked to the head.
One of the gears has been ground flat on a side which is strange as hell given the circular cam guide track, but it looks smoothly polished flat rather than teeth being ground off flat. Also the grease in the track is only in one small section.
Thanks for keeping the Scotch (keeper of the nine realms…etc…) going! She is so hackspace and I love having her in the front foyer. Score on the fairchild clone info. Will have to see if my full-size butterscotch runs off the same (I suspect so).
Reviving (heh) this thread, to let people know that butterscotch is back… well on my desk anyway and alive.
So the issue was:
the motor driver blew up
this was because the motor had melted its brushes
On the plus side, turns out the new part I am using, FAN8100N has actual stall protection and won’t instantly catch fire from overcurrent which is useful when you hook it up to a blown motor (probably would’ve been good to check that first).
If this happens in the future, the motor is kind of an RF500 type, somewhere around 6v, but unfortunately all the replacements I tried did not have the same voltage or current rating, so I ended up doing a brush/plastic transplant from a good motor on the right to the old motor on the left.
No idea how long it will hold up, this pony has already lived a more full life than most child’s toys, but I hope she hangs on for a bit longer and keeps scaring the pants off of welcoming people to the space.
)
