Inspiration
We were inspired by the struggles of our tiny friends and we decided that this useless yet empowering invention would bring some much needed light into our lives.
What it does
Buggy Buddies streams a feed from a head-mounted camera to a mini OLED display. It will also contain a hand-waving motion made possible with servo motors.
How we built it
We built this project on Arduino, using its IDE. We used a multitude of hardware parts like servo motors, a mini 128x64 OLED display, breadboards, and a USB camera.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges definitely arose from us overestimating the hardware. We initially wanted to implement more servos, but we soon found out that the Arduino could only power and turn one. We also had a hard time figuring out the hardware and software compatibility. As OpenCV is easier in Python, we wanted to we Firmata to connect the Arduino using the language. However, the mini OLED display could only be programmed in C given our resources, so we had to find a work around to that.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting the display to finally display an image after hours of work was definitely something we cheered at. Other than that, the fact that we pulled through these 24 hours without giving up and throwing in the towel was already a big achievement in of itself.
What we learned
We learned a lot! It was definitely a challenging experience, but since none of us has a lot of experience with hardware, we gained valuable skills for next time. For example, we will know not to overestimate or resources and abilities in the future. As well, we learned that it's important to plan and establish a realistic goal when first starting a project.
What's next for Buggy Buddies
Buggy Buddies hopes to actually work in the future without errors. However, we also hope to implement additional features, such as speaker input and output, more movements with the servos, and hand tracking. This project is definitely something we're passionate about, and we hope to see it to the end.
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