The lowly goldfish sit in their bowls all day watching the cats and dogs and birds of the household get all the love and attention from their humans- and the goldfish are green with envy.
That's why goldfish are best left alone in their bowl, and if they ask for a gun, a rope or a powered exoskeleton you should reply "fish, please".
But mad scientist Neil Mendoza is really bad at saying no to his goldfish, so he gave the finny little guy exactly what he's been asking for since Christmas '14- a hammer of his very own.
Fish Hammer from Neil Mendoza on Vimeo.
Neil's Fish Hammer Actuation Device uses a camera to track the goldfish's movements and drops the hammer when Smashie rotates in place:
People love to break ocean stuff. The Fish Hammer empowers fish to break people stuff.
As Smashie swims around the aquarium, his position is tracked with a webcam, using software written in C++ using openFrameworks and OpenCV. The hammer follows him around the tank on a carriage powered by an Applied Motion [applied-motion.com] stepper motor. The software calculates the velocity that the motor needs to be moving using a PID algorithm that takes the motor's encoder position as input and gives a velocity as output. This velocity is then sent over UDP to the stepper motor. The hammer head drops based on the slow rotation of a cam that the hammer rests on.
The Fish Hammer was designed using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Inventor. Instructions on how to build your very own Fish Hammer actuation device at instructables.com/id/Fish-Hammer-Actuation-Device. This project was created as part of Autodesk's artist in residence program.
-Via Geekologie