This is my first attepmpt at making something that does not look like a ball of wires, or an industrial incident. Daisy is an old “Discovery Kids” projection alarm clock turned into an autonomous obstacle avoiding bot with an Arduino Mini "brain".
There are some interesting challenges, when you try to make things look neat, or hack an existing toy. For instance, Daisy's "eye sockets" were a bit further part than the distance between the receiver and transmitter of the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor that I planned to use for obstacle detection. I ended up desoldering the receiver and transmitter from the board and connecting them with wires instead (not my original idea, I think I saw it somewhere online). To my pleasant surprise the sensor was functional after the mod, and I could install Daisy's "eyes" with the help of some hot glue.
With just the HC-SR04 sensor, Daisy was constantly hitting into lower obstacles because the eyes were too high. Additionally, her "skirt" was cathing on things, outside of the "cone of vision" for the ultrasonic sensor. After some mucking around, I installed three cheap infrared obstacle detection sensors under the white flower petals and that seems to solve the issue.
The alarm clock had a buzzer installed for the alrm, which I used to play a simple tune when I turn the robot on. Next, I will try to program some more interesting behaviour, maybe add more tunes / noises and more random reactions...
