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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