Inspiration
They told me to make something that throws. It sure throws those planes. And it's made of stuff that was thrown away. Helps with the whole low emission thing if most of the materials are temporarily saved from a landfill.
What it does
It launches a paper aeroplane. It even does this with a certain percentage of reliability. You can even aim the planes left and right using and launch them with the IR remote. The ultrasonic sensor lets you play a little mini game. The LEDs on top of the box randomly tell you wether to aim for the left or right zone. If you manage to fly through the correct zone you get a three happy little beeps played at you. Miss the zone and a long angry beep plays.
How we built it
It's mostly pizza boxes and energy drinks cans sellotaped together. I shoved an off brand Arduino inside to make it do things. A stepper motor attached to the base of a can steers the launcher. The launcher uses a servo the release a rubber ban that does the launching. I wrote a test sketch that let me read the command values off the IR remote through the serial monitor. This let me map the remote readings to gizmo actions. The ultrasonic sensor sends out a bunch of pulses when the plane is launched. When I read the time it takes to bounce back, I can use maths involving the speed of sound that someone else did to calculate how far plane passed from the sensor. I tried to use as few new materials in this build as possible, even the paper for the aeroplanes is old hackathon posters.
Challenges we ran into
I was limited in the capabilities of the machine by the parts it had. My kit only contained one of each useful part so I had to pick my features carefully. The stepper motor originally ran off of the onboard 5v power causing the servo to become sad. I had to chop up a bad usb cable to supply 5v to the motor separately. The IR remote broke a lot. Making sure I was using methods from version 3 of the IRlibrary helped, as well as keeping my code and breadboard tidy. I do not know
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It works! It does everything I meant for it to do. Which was impressive as this is the first time I have had made anything using an Arduino.
What we learned
What's next for Trash Plane Yeeter
As the hardware took up most of my time, I would like to dedicate more time to the software. I think more interesting games with scorekeeping would be a good addition that wouldn't upset the delicate machine. I would like to add height and tension adjustments to the launcher, although this may require a large scale redesign. While I think this project is doomed to return to the bin, I have learned a lot and this certainly will not be the last cobbled together toy I will inflict upon the world.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.