The Little Tike Cozy Coupe, a children’s classic made of soft hollow plastic (LPDE), is a blank canvas for tinkering and customization. While the car comes with some entertainment options, such a squeaker in the horn, I think that my client deserves something a little more realistic and, of course, high-tech.
This wasn’t a particularly difficult project, but it did take a bit of time to set up. The overall concept is to create a media controller which plays different sounds depending on the button pressed. I figured I could replace the toy key with a giant button and also fill the blank space on the left with some buttons to select the music.
Rugged Metal Pushbutton with Blue LED Ring – 16mm Blue Momentary: These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged and look real good while doing it! Simply drill a 16mm hole into any material up to 1/2″ thick and you can fit these in place, there’s even a rubber gasket to keep water out of the enclosure. On the front of the button is a flat metal actuator, surrounded by a blue plastic LED ring. Read more.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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