Make Your Own Pet Fire Breathing Dragon

[Jorvon Moss] a.k.a. [Odd_Jayy] is known as a maker of “companion robots” which he carriers perched on top of his shoulders. (I don’t know about you, but we’re getting some pretty strong Ash and Pikachu vibes.)

In one of his recent builds, he decided to give his companion bot a bit of sizzle. His Widget Dragon Companion Bot is an impressive 3D printed build, divided into a surprisingly few parts. The robot is controlled using an Adafruit Crickit, marketed specifically for robotics projects, and is easily programmed using the increasingly popular Microsoft MakeCode.

With a few servos, [Odd Jay] was able to animate his bot giving it more of an “alive” feel. Finally, he added a vape pen to give the dragon some pyrotechnic effects.

This is just the kind of energy we love to see here at Hackaday. While you’re around, take a look at some of [Odd_Jayy’s] other robot projects and head over to his Instagram page to see more real-time project updates.

24 thoughts on “Make Your Own Pet Fire Breathing Dragon

  1. Why not? At the last Maker Faire held in NYC, the lady ambassador from Hackster.IO went around with one. She said it was named Archimedes, after the Greek fellow who coined the word “Eureka!”, (which does not mean what all of you think it does). I thought it was a good idea.

      1. They are probably less shocked about being naked back in the days than we do now.

        >Ancient Olympic athletes competed in the nude. The word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. In ancient times athletes practiced in the nude to the accompaniment of music. They also performed naked at the Olympic Games.

        Probably triggers a few censorship in the commenting system.

        1. People outside the fantasy islands known as the Americas aren’t “shocked” by naked people anyway. Over here in Germany we take our clothes off before we use the shower (just to give an example), which probably is unheard of in the US.

  2. I love the idea(s) … however, I wonder if it would make sense to use a different material for most of the body. If you look at puppet builds, WEIGHT is one of the main concerns, so most of the skeleton usually is made from wire only, the “flesh” is light-weight foam. You could probably get away with smaller servos as well if you paid attention to weight and flexibility.

    Yes, I do get it’s a kids’ build – but still …

    1. The problem is that making (whats essentially) a stuffed animal sounds a lot easier then it is, while this might be a bit heavier at least its a fairly manageable task (really just printing and cleaning up the print) putting together a animating stuffed animal is a lot more work.

      1. I wasn’t referring to stuffed(!) animals, but to puppets – which aren’t stuffed but instead as hollow as you can get them. Having built several puppets (Muppets style and other) I know from own experience how much 100g difference can make!
        It is NOT that difficult. The first two may be … but once you get the hang of how the structure (the “skeleton”) is made,it is definitely far easier than getting a well-supported 3d print.

        Then, I was just suggesting improvements. I know that today “3d print” is the biggest hype and anything that is not 3d-printed is not “a hack”, but I *LIKE* the idea of those “companion robs” enough to think about how to make the most obvious downside less … well, heavy.

        1. Does it say somewhere how heavy this dragon is? If its designer is smart its pieces are more like an exoskeleton with only very lightweight internal structure anyway. Not sure how that would compare with the skeleton and foam method of construction though.

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      1. Oh I see that you re-ordered from the headline. I think it does make sense as it is treating “fire breathing dragon” as the noun which is the pet. Maybe “fire breathing dragon pet” could work too, but that’s a bit more Germanic.

  3. It doesn’t breathe fire. I do appreciate a good animatronic but this project is at best a proto frame. Vape mod glycerin smoker doesnt fit. Nice works so far.
    KamuiCosplay link is fun. Still waiting for her cuteness to explode/implode when FAst forward button gets stuck.

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