Robot Wedding

[Tetragrammatron]

So I'm currently in the midst of planning my wedding for August. I definitely want to put some nerd touches on it however, and am having trouble coming up with ideas. At first I was thinking of buying and building herbie mouse bots for each table at the reception. The mouse follows light sources very quickly (maybe too quickly) and would be entertaining I"m sure. I just know that at lots of weddings that I go to, I get pretty bored (especially during the speeches) and need something to distract me, so I figured the mouse bot would be perfect!

However, its fairly expensive ($39.99 US) if I wanted to build one for each table (20 tables of 10 people), and may move too quickly (or just not work at all since each table will be covered with plates, etc.).

http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails ... de=MKSB001

Anyone have alternative ideas for nerdy things I could have at each of my guests tables so they can entertain themselves? It'd be nice to limit it to $20 each, or I suppose I could do $40 each and just put it at every second table. Anyways, if anyone has ideas, let me know!!

[Bergo]

Biped humanoid robots as cake toppers?


LED throwies on the table - might be interesting if you're having a dance?

R2D2 looking robot with a digital video camera randomly wandering around capturing fond memories of your wedding?

*shrug*

[SolTurboLove]

You could make a small micro controller circuit that flashes LEDs by reacting to voice/light/movement, kinda like an interactive candle....at weddings i find myself playing with the candle a lot...
parts would cost about ~$4-5, pcbs would be about ~$2-3.

[thesaxmachine]

The mousebots aren't that great. I have built one before. It would probably be cheaper for you to build bristle bots:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/bristlebot
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4699

[Odemia]

Is this meant to entertain you or add some hacker flair to the event? Or both?

Cupcake wedding cakes are in style. You could get yourself a Makerbot with Paste-struder and print the icing on al cupcakes with personalized messages...

[Tetragrammatron]

We are planning on doing cupcakes instead of a wedding cake, so the printing idea is a good one.

I really love Sol's idea for some sort of meter at each table. I sort of envision a kind of blanket of LED's, in the form of a cylinder (this "blanket" would be wrapped around something like a centerpiece that is about 2 feet tall and cylindrical I think?). The LED's would take either voice as their input, or light, and would either get brighter, or light up more LED's based on the inputs.

I have no idea what level of difficulty a project like that would be sooooo maybe someone can tell me if thats impossible? Haha. I know it would be more expensive than what Sol mentioned, but it sounds like a fun project.

[SolTurboLove]

hmm, there are malleable LED strips available, you could wrap them around a cylinder or something? maybe submerge them in a bowl of water?
Another idea is to have a little wireless module controlling the Centerpieces so they can interact with each other!

[Bergo]

I watche da 20 minute "documentry" about the arduino dev boards the other night, in it they showed a guy who build maracas with an arduino in them that had a 3 axis accelerometer in it, when shaken it would wirlessly send the force it was shaken with to a computer running a projector housed inside a spherical paper encolure. Based on the force the maraca was shaken with, the projector would display a "fireworks" pattern in the sphere. looked pretty cool.

[SolTurboLove]

I've actually talked to a few friends about this project and they've been really quite interested in it!
This could potentially be something that wedded nerds around the world would want.

If you decide on some specs i wouldn't mind drawing up a few ideas...

What types/how many sensors would you want?
1. Having voice input would be relatively easy.
2. Having a light sensor may be a little finicky, but doable.
3. Having an infrared sensor will allow you to wireless control each centerpiece. Tricky, but has potential to be amazing.
4. Accelerometer/vibration sensor would make it interactive if you wanted people to pick it up.

Would you want single color, or tri-color LEDs?
Tri-color would require 3 pins per LED, but you could make it any color of the rainbow.

How many LEDs did you want?
The more LEDs you have, the less the battery life you have.

From there, we can select an appropriate microprocessor and make it happen!

[Tetragrammatron]

Voice input I think. Although it may cause people to just chatter at it at inappropriate moments, I think overall it will help stimulate conversation

As to LED's, I was thinking perhaps single color ones in sort of a layered fashion. An example would be a "mesh" wrapped around a glass centerpiece perhaps. The lowest LED's are all one color, and they change to different colors higher up. As volume is increased, the lights light up higher and higher till it reaches the top of the cylinder. I have a good idea in my mind but I'll try to get it on paper or look up if said "meshes" exist.

I'm crazy excited for this. Next hackspace I'll try to have some things put together to show you Sol!