Chicken pi is a chicken made out of Legos that lays eggs. via richardhaylor
Every Easter the school has an egg decorating competition. Last year the boys were victorious with a joint effort that used their soldering skills to create this great (and pun-tastic) scene.
The boys were really keen to use a Pi this year and inspired by the excellent egg-laying machine we saw at the Raspberry Pi birthday party, decided to build a Lego version.
We decided to use the Lego WeDo hub that we had to make fitting a motor easy, and then had the bright idea to use the distance sensor as the trigger: You put your finger in between the chicken’s beak and on detecting the change in distance value reported by the sensor, the Pi activates the motor. Manual re-loading of the egg is then required!
The eggs are inserted into a cage mechanism in the Chicken’s body. The motor is mounted perpendicular to the cage and turns it via two a simple 90 degree gearbox. This rotates a central shaft that translates the egg around and over a hole in the bottom of the chicken. A little trail and error enabled us to calculate how long to power the motor in order to achieve the desired range of motion.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!