Sloth Door Greeter Uses Neat Fold-Up Electronics Enclosures

[Alan Reiner] is building a sloth-like door greeter for his house. Sloxel, as he is affectionately known, can move around and even talk, with [Alan] using some nifty tricks in the design process

Sloxel’s job is to vet visitors to [Alan’s] house, before inviting them to knock on the door or to leave their details and go away. There’s still plenty of work to do on that functionality, which [Alan] plans to implement using ChatGPT. In the meantime, though, he’s been working hard on the hardware platform that will power Sloxel. A Raspberry Pi 3B+ is charged with running the show, including talking to the ChatGPT API and handling Sloxel’s motion along a linear rail with a number of stepper motors.

What we really love about this build, though, is the enclosure. [Alan] designed a housing for everything that can be 3D printed as a single part with print-in-place hinges. The four sides of the enclosure can then be folded up and into place with a minimum of fuss. Plus, the enclosure has plenty of nifty features that makes it easy to mount all the required hardware. It’s a neat design that we’d love to repurpose for some of our own projects.

We’ve seen other neat ideas in this area before, like using PCBs themselves as an enclosure. Video after the break.

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Snoozy The Sloth

[vimeo = 4703152]

Snoozy the Sloth clings to you and sleeps. While this may sound easily done, the maker wanted the sloth to actually simulate breathing with exhaled breath to add to the realism. To do this, they had to build a “respiratory system” out of a rubber glove, a solenoid, and a couple pumps.  This kind of toy can be very beneficial to special needs children. The lifelike and calm behavior helps the child connect to the toy. The pumps and solenoid are said to not be too distracting, but we are curious just how loud they are. This seems well executed, and much more sloth like than slothra, another sloth toy from last week. Were these guys in an Arduino powered sloth making class together?

Slothra, Arduino Powered Plushy Sloth

slothra

[Daniel] sent in this project. He tells us it’s an Arduino powered kid’s toy that “furiously swings his arms” when you squeeze his chest. As you can see in the video on the site, furious is up for interpretation. It is a sloth though, maybe that’s sloth furious.  While it is cute and we do applaud the effort, anyone with children will agree that this is a step down in destruction for a 3 year old. You’re going to have to spice it up a bit, or give it a timer and make it free standing, make it roar or something to make it more appealing.  What recommendations do you guys have to improve this toy?