Have you ever been seduced by a claw machine in an arcade, only to have your hopes of a cuddly toy dashed as it fails to hang onto your choice? Then you’re in luck, because now you can play to your heart’s content online. [Ryan Walmsley] wants you to control his Raspberry Pi-driven claw machine.
Hardware-wise he’s replaced the original 8052 microcontroller and relay control with the Pi and a custom H-bridge PCB. We particularly light the warning: “Highish voltage”, and we feel it should appear more often. There is some code in his GitHub repository, but we suspect it doesn’t have everything.
We had a lot of fun digging into the documentation on this one. From his initial thoughts through some prototyping and a board failure, to the launch of the online version and finally a run-down of how it all works, he’s got it covered.
Sadly the machine itself isn’t online all the time, it seems to be only online when [Ryan] is at home, so if you live on the other side of the world from his British base you may be out of luck. Fortunately though his previous live streams are online, so you can see it in action on a past outing below the break.
Of course what kind of swag do you load up in a claw machine like this one? On his Twitter feed we’ve seen tests of the aliens from Toy Story (who start their existence in a claw machine so quite fitting). The majority of items show in is recorded games — now numbering over 2000 — have been our beloved companion cube.
There have been a few claw machines here over the years, from this large custom build to this one built for a child’s birthday.
Via Recantha.
Nice, on his webpage it looks like he is scrambling to put the machine back together, because of us. Thank you.
Indeed. It’s all back up and working now though :)
This thing has never been on when I’ve tried to play with it.
To be honest I didn’t know that It would be posted on here at all and I had no warning. I’ve been actually doing some more work on it behind the scenes.
“We particularly light the warning”?!? Was that supposed to be “liked”?
This is awesome, also check out these black desert online hacks! https://obfuscating.net/
yay! got the old pi2 (one with a yellow cinch conn) on second try ! (aba18720)
ok, so after removing 4 items pretty easily, and seeing him refill, i’ll stop and leave some for you guys.. a chat function would be nice !
I managed to “win” something (uid 69592032, game id 2167), good clear pick up of the device – although I didn’t get a clear look at exactly what it was. Neat. the guy is just reloading it now!
I agree the quality isn’t the best. I originally used a PS3 Eye Cam which is a lower resolution than what’s in use now but I’m actually using that now for the Payout sensor I’m working on. I’m now using a Microsoft Camera which is 720p but it seems to always over expose from where I’m using the blueish white LED Strips. I’ll be getting another PS3 eye or two this week.
Uid b367439c, got a pi 2 on the first try, haha.
Excellent! It’s actually a Pi 3s, A B+ (Red), Model Bs Rev 2s and A+s.
The Pi 3 actually died when I made a mistake working on the first set of electronics. Oops
Nice, aiming for the companion cube now.
Got both of them!
Yay I got some snow!
awesome idea! it saves money! :P
Winner!
User ID: c5d9bdfe
Success! Your request to move the claw 1.05 Seconds Right then 2.2 Seconds Forward has been added to the database.
Your request ID is: 3175
Here’s the real deal
https://www.twitch.tv/clawarcade