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  • Author Author: ntewinkel
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Rube Goldberg Machine to Turn On a Light

ntewinkel

I've always wanted to build a Rube Goldberg Machine, but I had no idea how tedious - and painful - the process would be! Laughing

It also took a LOT more pre-thinking and figuring out just to plan what was possible and how each step could trigger the next step. And oh boy is this thing ever finicky on exactly where each item has to be!

So without further ado, here is my Rube Goldberg Machine!

Nico's Rube Goldberg Machine

It turns on the light in the top corner, and all you have to do is simply touch the little bird on the post to start the machine.

I'm hoping to get proper government funding so that I can shrink down this machine into something that will fit into a standard electrical box that can be mounted in place of a regular light switch Stuck out tongue winking eye

Here's my intro video:

And here is the final machine in action!!

Full disclosure: I had to use a little bit of film-maker magic to get the full final sequence Laughing
Each step actually (surprisingly!) worked very well by itself and most of the time it did trigger the next action, but having ALL steps work ALL the time is not something I was able to achieve.
Some was to get better camera angles - I was able to quite reliably have the bird trigger the robot arm, and the robot arm very reliably delivered the marble, and the marble somewhat reliably triggered the robot-worm, and the robot-worm always reliably crashed into the excavator, but the stylus didn't reliably press the button in the app to start the Elegoo car (it's a TINY button!). After adding a few supports and by using sticky-tacky, and after much effort and trial and error, the car crash somewhat reliably would press the button to turn on Mr. Robot who then very reliably uttered the command to tell Alexa to turn on the light.
And, sigh, Alexa refused to listen to an inferior robot saying her name - it does actually turn on the light if I say her name first just before the robot says the command. I should've recorded my own voice for the keyword.

All in all I'm pretty happy with how it all came together!

Enjoy!

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  • in reply to beacon_dave

    >"The bird on a stick that I had used to have had a bit of a tendency to rotate around the pole"

    Oh it did that here too! and it failed a lot at first because of it. I was able to compensate somewhat by moving the reed switch closer to the base and starting the bird rotated away a bit. Every step was kind of like that - compensating for the real-life movements and aligning the next steps carefully. Very finicky business Laughing