Ponogolf

[PonoBill]

As the undisputed master of the totally stupid project, I present Ponogolf. No, I don't golf, but Diane does. so when we put in artificial turf at Ponohouse to eliminate the mud bog in the back yard, Diane had a putting green added. So of course I had to add miniature golf features. I teamed up with brother Bob to do the required windmill, with stepper motor drive programmed to be random speed and random reversing. And of course any mini golf course needs a dancing robot obstacle. Ours is named Karl, after Carl in Caddyshack, with a K because Karl is a spitting image of Karl Rohlfing after many samples of his estimable homebrew. Last but not least is the spastic programmable arm, Ty, named after Chevy Chase's character, Ty Webb. Ty is unpredictable and glitchy--perfect. Here's the windmill, an accurate representation of the Eastham mill except I guess Bob forgot a window or two. the code for the stepper motor is ridiculous since I decided the little OLED screen on the development board I chose should display system diagnostics, voltage, rotational speed and direction--even though it's buried inside the windmill. Why? because I'm fucking nuts.

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[PonoBill]

And here's Karl, dancing his little heart out. The eyes are ultrasonic range finders, and Karl will moonwalk his way back from any obstacle. He lives in a hourglass-shaped chute on the putting green. What happens next is a bit random since the back up stuff is interrupt-driven and the rest of the dancing isn't. It's too bad my code sucks so badly, but it's good for crap like this. You have to click "watch on facebook. Why? I don't know.

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And for you Yellowstone fans, here's Karl dancing to the Yellowstone theme with some slick new moves I wrote:

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And then there's poor spastic Ty. I need to rewrite this software from the ground up. It's got lots of blocking. The world would be a better place is arduino C++ eliminated the delay function. I can fix this, but as an obstacle, maybe Ty is just perfect.

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[TallDude]

Good fun tinkering. Bob did a nice job on the windmill. Seems like a golf ball might get the better of it? I'm sure Diane would feel bad if her or her friends broke it... Does Karl have a transducer that triggers a routine based on wave velocity or specific frequencies?

[PonoBill]

So far the windmill handles ball strikes with no problems, which is a good thing since it gets plenty. It's just putting. Karls doesn't change its dance according to anything but a random selection of specific moves. the connection to song tempo and character is just humans matching patterns.

[surfcowboy]

This is all good stuff. Love the crazy randomness you're adding. And also that the crappy code and servos are adding lol

[Bean]

As a non-technical person, I would have just assumed hamster, hamster-wheel and a couple oz of Jim Beam.

Very cool project, you and your brother have complimentary skills for sure!