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Corporate Companion

Made by 8BitsAndAByte / Art / Communication / Robotics

About the project

The ultimate business accessory, a robot companion for all your corporate needs. Including inspirational quotes and buzzwords!

Project info

Difficulty: Easy

Platforms: Adafruit, Raspberry Pi

Estimated time: 7 hours

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA version 4.0 or later (CC BY-NC-SA 4+)

Items used in this project

Hardware components

	Tie Strap	x 1
	9DoF Sensor Stick Stick	x 1
	Spraypaint	x 1
	Sensor Cable - Electrode Pads (3 connector)	x 2
	Grove - Mini Track Ball	x 2
	Powerbank	x 1
	MG995	x 1
	Mini External USB Stereo Speaker	x 1
	Raspberry Pi 3 Model B	x 1

View all

Software apps and online services

	Tape, Duct
	ttsmp3
	Raspberry Pi Raspbian

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Hot glue gun (generic)

x 1

Story

Overview

Below a quick overview of the content.

Introduction and showcase video
Suitcase
Personality
Movement
Voice
Result

Introduction and showcase video

We’re going to build the ultimate business accessory, a robot companion for all your corporate needs. Including wrongly used inspirational quotes, confusing advice and buzzwords!

Project Video

Suitcase

Every accomplice needs a body, in this case an old suitcase. It has two advantages, it’s plain and professional looking, and there are plenty of cheap ones available in second hand stores!

The original suitcase

Personality

Believe it or not, some personality is required.

A pair of eyes and a nice mustache will do the trick.

We make the eyes out of clear plastic ornament balls.

Spray painting the inside gives them a nice glossy look and adding some felt furniture pads as pupils finishes them off.

Ornament ball

Adding a must-have tie is the cherry on top.

Looking good

Movement

Our buddy should be able to move. A servo is able to move the lid up and down, giving it a very natural, talking look.

Servo

Voice

The final step is giving him a voice. Writing some must have soundbites and using this text-to-speech service leaves us with some very neat mp3s.

All that is left to do is plugging in a USB speaker and setting it as the default audio device.

USB speaker

Result

And there you have it, a corporate friend to give you meaningful advice and help you get through the toughest of meetings!

Internal Electronics

End result

Code

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import os
import json
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
from random import randint

servoPIN = 17
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(servoPIN, GPIO.OUT)

p = GPIO.PWM(servoPIN, 50)  # GPIO 17 for PWM with 50Hz
p.start(2.5)  # Initialization

try:
    while True:

        p.ChangeDutyCycle(4)

        # Collect all the names of the images in out folder and the amount
        names = [name for name in os.listdir('/home/pi/Desktop/corporate/audio')]
        total = len([name for name in os.listdir('/home/pi/Desktop/corporate/audio')])

        # Generate a random number, -1 because our index start at 0
        random = randint(0, total-1)
        print(total)

        # Fetch the name belonging to this random number
        name = '/home/pi/Desktop/corporate/audio/'+names[random]
        print(name)

        #Play the audio
        os.system('mpg123 ' + name)
        time.sleep(0.2)
        p.ChangeDutyCycle(5)
        sleep = randint(10, 60)
        print(sleep)
        time.sleep(5)

except KeyboardInterrupt:

    p.stop()

Credits

8BitsAndAByte

We’re Dane & Nicole, two makers that create tremendously terrible tech, which we happily share with you on our channel! https://www.youtube.com/c/8bitsandabyte

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Corporate Companion

About the project

Project info