Origami cranes are cool, but do you know what’s cooler? Origami cranes dancing to the beat. That’s the challenge [Basami Sentaku] took on when he created Dancing Paper (YouTube link). You might remember [Basami] from his 8 bit harmonica hack. In Dancing Paper, paper cranes seem to dance all on their own – even performing some crazy spinning moves. Of course, the “magic” is due to some carefully written code, and magnets, lots of magnets.
Using magnets to move objects from below isn’t a new concept. Many of us have seen the “ice skating pond” Christmas decoration which uses the same effect. Unlike the skating pond,Dancing Paper has moving parts (other than the cranes themselves). Under the plastic surface are a series of individually controlled electromagnets. Each of the supporting dancers has a line of four magnets, while the featured dancer in the center has a 5×5 matrix. The 41 electromagnets were wound around bolts with the help of a Tamiya motor and gearbox.
The actual dance moves are controlled by C code which appears to be running on an Atmel microcontroller. Of course a microcontroller wouldn’t be able to drive those big coils, so some beefy TO-220 case transistors were employed to switch the loads. The cranes themselves needed a bit of modification as well. Thin pieces of wire travel from the neodymium magnets on their feet up to the body of the crane. The wire provides just enough support to keep the paper from collapsing, while still being flexible enough to boogie down.
Click past the break to see Dancing Paper in action!
whoa that thing must of cost a small fortune to make
must have cost*
Awesome !!!
That’s “only” 41 electro magnets, only the middle hen is fully animated with 25 of them, the others just use 4 each.
Here is my breakdown on the hard costs for each electromagnet:
bolt: 10 cents
magnet wire: 50 cents
BJT or MOSFET: 25 cents
That’s less than a dollar, but we’ll round up to keep things safe and simple. I’m counting 41 elements, so that’s about $41 for the required bits.
The remainder of the build depends entirely on what you happen to have on-hand, but even if you had to purchase everything new, I’m guessing you could do it for under $60.
So I’d put the total build cost at under $100, and under $50 if you are creative and are well-stocked on scrap materials.
Hardly a small fortune, and *well* worth it for the entertainment vale!
For just a few $$$ more, some colored LEDs under the plexi would just push this over the top.
I imagine little cranes rigged up to play DDR with light up dance pads now.
Too cool!
well… I am thoroughly entertained :)
Funny and brilliant!
Kinda creepy seeing origami cranes with legs.
I’d love to have one of them dancing when someone rings my doorbell :-)
Brilliant, and clever to keep costs down with only 4 electromagnets for each of the ‘backup cranes’. Puts this within the realm of doability for the average hacker rather than only being achievable in the MIT media lad or with some massive sponsor. Nice hack! :D
Dancing paper + Single Ladies… I had to do this (mute the left video! press the bottom left play button, not on the videos):
http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/54f5cbe825687-dancing-paper-single-ladies.php
You win the internet today, CodeMonkey. Unquestionably.
Rarely do I comment here, but that was the best laugh I’ve had in a while.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
That is awesome! I hope Basami sees this and makes it real!
I vote for the birds on the left. Sasha Fierce can be scary. Thanks for taking it up a crotch, I mean notch.
That was much better than I expected, fairly well synchronized.
I wonder why he didn’t use that PCB trick in that older post.
But its cool!
That is Nuck’n Futz !!!!
I wonder if you could use micro stepping to smooth out the movements. The rotation calculations would be tricky but possible.