Toy for Arduino: Tuk-tuk locker

One-year-old children love lockers: open and close the doors, hide toys and then, as it were, suddenly find them there. The idea was that the parents would hide the toy in the locker, and the child should guess by the sound of the locker who lives there. To listen to the sound, the child must knock on the door.

First, I tested the idea without electronics - using a cardboard box and a book with animal sounds - more precisely, I only had a panel with sounds from the book. Animal figurines hid in the box, the child knocked on the box, I pressed the button with the animal's voice, the child tried to guess and opened the box.

Book with sound board:

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Testing was successful, and we started to develop.

Development

The locker was ordered in the DVP workshop. The result was a bulky “bunker” that had to be fixed to the surface with double-sided tape, but the equipment worked.



Contact microphones were used as a knock sensor. From Arduino Uno, the signal picks up the script on Pure Data, which plays the sound file.

Contact microphones:


Microphone on the back of the door:




A box with an Arduino board in the far corner. Carton - so that the light bulb does not attract the attention of the child:


Now let's try to knock:



Experiments on children

We approach the most interesting. The first reaction to the sounds from the locker was wary, but with a great deal of curiosity. Children intuitively understand how a knock can be used as a call signal and after a few minutes the acquaintance has moved into the game phase.



The toy can be used for a variety of scenarios: guessing animal sounds, musical instruments, words, letters.

It would seem that the same can be done for the tablet. In fact, it is important for children to touch things with their hands - open the doors, feel the weight of objects. Fine motor skills are very important for children's development and cannot be replaced with mobile poking.