Have you ever wanted a cute little pet on your desk? Now you can with a cute little cat from outer space. You can pet it by pushing its head down and it'll purr using a vibration motor! Using a rotary encoder you can turn its head around, be careful you don't wanna turn a full 360 or else the cat might start to feel uncomfortable. It's eyes change when you pet it using an LCD.
With a 16x2 LCD for its eyes, a vibration motor for purring, an arduino UNO R3 for the brains, and a rotary encoder to turn its head and act as a button. The rest is 3D printed, 4 screws to hold the LCD in place, everything else is either a snap connection or attached when printing.
Alien Cat is easy to use! Leave it on your desk and if you want you can pet it. It's to put simply a desk decoration. You can turn its head around, or press down on its head and it will respond! Twist its head too much and it might get dizzy, but if you pet it (push down) it'll become happy and start purring!
Why not? We looked around and realized our desks are super messy, why not add more to the mess and have a little desk pet. The alien cat design was just a random idea! It was also a good excuse to use components that we haven't used before and to design something that looks cute.
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The star The star comes in two pieces, the "lid" and the star itself. The lid of the star is a thin piece of plastic that should go on the bottom (contrary to the name!). Place your Arduino UNO R3, and batteries on top and then place the star on top..
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The body Here it gets a little more difficult! Place the vibration motor and rotary encoder in their respective spots on the top of the body. The vibration motor should fit in the cut out circle spot while the rotary encoder sits in the middle. Connect the wiring for the vibration motor and the rotary encoder by threading the wires through the body. Then you can connect them via the hole in the star and hole at the base of the cat!!
The body is in two pieces, you can put them together after assembling the electronics with adhesive!
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The head Another tricky part! Screw in the LCD in the respective slot! The LCD should face outwards and pointing at the hollow holes in the cat face. The head is similar to the body and is in two pieces, you can put them together after assembling the electronics with adhesive!!
There is a slot at the base of the cat head to thread wires through. After you are done you can place the cat head direction on top of the rotary encoder. At the bottom of the cat head there is a spot for it, align it with the grooves for a nice fit.
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firmware
connect your device to the arduino through a USB cable and run the code on Arduino IDE!
once everything has been placed you now have a alien desktop kitty! push on its head to activate the rotary encoder switch for head pads, twist its head for it to change expressions on the lcd eyes and listen to it purr through the vibration motor
Optional steps:
Feel free to sand, prime, and paint the alien kitty. This doesn't serve any functional purpose and is purely cosmetic.
Useful websites that helped make this possible:
https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/electronics/lcd-displays/
https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/arduino-rotary-encoder/
Electronic CAD models used:
Arduino UNO By: Ludvig Broomé
LCD 16x2 By: Даниил Неважно
Rotary Encoder By: Anthony Berkow
