Houndball in action

Press Release

HOUNDBALL

Rolling and jittering independently, recklessly emitting a series of 8-bit sounds; Houndball has a mind of its own. This unique toy is every dogs dream.

Houndball was created by Product Design students, Linsey Lawson and Morna Macpherson (DJCAD, Engineering at the University of Dundee). It is a playful dog toy designed to entertain your dog independently. Simply switch it on and the ball does all the work for you! Houndball has been programmed to run a motor, which drives the ball to roll and jiggle around in various directions, exciting and encouraging your dog to chase and play with it. As well as the visual element of Houndball it emits a series of 8-bit cheeky sounds that go up and down a scale, giving out a high pitched and excitable call to your dog reinforcing his interaction. This innovative and fun toy runs in cycles keeping your pup on his toes. There is a 5 second delay allowing you to hide the ball somewhere so your dog can seek it out when the frantic happenings begin again. The cycle runs for a 30 second duration, pauses and keeps on going. With its soft and colourful finish and easy to locate switch, there is no end to the fun your dog will have chasing this wild ball. 

The working prototype video

Adding the switch

Because we wanted to cover houndball, we have decided to add a switch in to the circuit. BAD MOVE!
We have wired the switch between the battery and the voltage regulator. For some reason we cant seem to get it to control the circuit. Houndball is dead!

After days of moving the switch and experimenting with new bits of code. We are back to the drawing board!

The Ball and circuit

Once all the parts were joined, the circuit had to be glued into the ball. We had worked out the sizes previously so everything would fit tightly in place.

Transferring the circuit

We copied the circuit over from the breadboard onto this new board which we cut into a circle to fit into the ball. We had to remember to break the connections between parts on the circuit. This whole process pr proved more difficult than it looked!

Final code

main:

high b.3

pause 1000

pwmout b.3, 255, 200

for b0 = 85 to 130

sound c.1, (b0,2)

next b0

for b0 = 85 to 130

sound c.1,(b0,2)

next b0

pause 1000

for b0 = 80 to 125 step 1

sound c.1,(b0,2)

next b0

for b1 = 125 to 80 step -1

sound c.1,(b1,1)

next b1

pause 1000

for b0 = 90 to 125 step 1

sound c.1,(b0,3)

next b0

for b1 = 120 to 90 step -1

sound c.1,(b1,2)

next b1

pause 5000 

pwmout b.3,255,0

low b.3

pause 8000

goto main

Our final working piece of written code! This combines commands to make the speaker work alongside the motor. The motor begins and the speaker follows with its series of sounds. When the speaker stops the motor continues to run for a further 5 seconds. There is an 8 second pause where everything is silent and not moving before the sequence begins again.