If you’re celebrating Christmas and don’t have a tree yet, but you’re geeky, arts-and-craft kind of person, then you’ll love this Arduino-based animatronic talking tree.
The project, created by “Dad, maker, dreamer, hacker, painter” fjordcarvr, comes to us from the always awesome Instructables, via Wired’s Geekdad blog. According to the site, you’ll need a small wireframe artificial Christmas tree, some covered wire, some garland, wood, “a scrap of something thin and flat,” paint, polystyrene, styrofoam balls, a foam sheet, copper piping, an Arduino board, a breadboard, two servo motors, wire, two sets of Lynxmotion ball joints, and Christmas lights, among other things. There’s a complete list on the site itself.
You prep the tree, including drilling holes in it, taking the tree and turning it from something Charlie Brown hung his pathetic ornament on, to a slightly creepy, but very cool talking tree. You’ll have to know a little bit of the art of code-fu in order to pull this off, of course. As with other cool hacks, you can take this idea as a starting point and truly make it your own. Again, the complete instructions are found on the Instructables page. Here it is in action:
If you like this post, you’ll also probably also like our post on a Super Mario Christmas Tree, as well as a Christmas tree made out of recycled soda bottles.
