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| Making elephant buttons |
The idea is that Valli will investigate the pipes and in doing so, approach capacitance sensors mounted at the base - these are made from tinfoil and plywood sandwiches and can be calibrated to act as inputs before they are actually touched.
As she approaches each button with her trunk tip, a different tone is produced. Using a tiny piezo buzzer, it is not possible to generate the low and interesting sounds (didgeridoo) that we tested on our last visit.
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| Fritzing layout of device with Arduino microcontroller |
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| First attempt - too small |
The Skanda Vale elephant barn has some useful browsing holes, so we closed one and dismantled the original frame, then fixed the button system in place. It was soon obvious that the 20cm pipe I had used was too small for Valli's trunk, so Brother Peter and I resolved to build a bigger version the following day.
We found some more wood and larger dimension pipe and made a simpler 2 button version for Valli to try.
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| Valli's trunk exploring the buttons |
Brother Stefan coaxed Valli to probe the hole using a piece of banana at the end of the button, which meant that she obviously continued to search the buttons for more food treats. This meant we couldn't show that she was interested in the sound being produced, but it gave us a good idea of the practicalities of future button production.
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| Valli takes a break from button pressing |
Plans to try and make a shower control for Valli, so she can activate the shower by herself from inside her barn.
I'm hoping to make a family trip back to the Ashram at Easter to install shower controls. The interesting part for me will be if we can offer her a range of different kinaesthetic experiences with the water and allow her to choose - squirt, spray, drip etc. This will mean she will have to be able to differentiate between the buttons.
