For Christmas 2011 Pictometry had a holiday “Throwdown” challenge. Each department was given box of miscellaneous items that had to be incorporated into some sort of creation. The box was handed off from one engineer to the next. Everyone was too busy. Finally, with two days left before the judging, it was time to take action. With much help from my fellow engineers I built TreeBot, a remote control Christmas Tree with all the trimmings and wireless video for remote operation.
It consists of my old Duratrax Evader RC car with a Christmas Tree mounted to it, Christmas lights on a power inverter, an iPod Shuffle playing Christmas tunes on an amplified speaker and a 2.4 Ghz video transmitter for remote operation. It is decorated with various items we had to use in our creation. We came in second place behind Finance who did a Christmas Carol play using the items as props but I feel it was a good entry representative of engineering given the time constraints.
I took some pictures of TreeBot as I took it apart in case we decide to build something similar next year:
TreeBot
We used a cheap amplified speaker and an iPod Shuffle loaded with Christmas music to give TreeBot a voice.
A 2.4 Ghz video transmitter was used to transmit TreeBot's perspective to a receiver wired to an old analog video monitor another engineer donated to the cause.
If I were to do it again I would use a wider angle lens for the video camera. Navigating around corners was particularly difficult because of the narrow field of view.
We made the face out of materials provided. The eyes are made from little sticky foam beads shaped into balls and the mouth is a strand of foam peanuts.
TreeBot was lit up using a standard strand of incandescent Christmas lights (provided) using a cheap power inverter on a 3000mAh 3S LiPo Battery pack.
Presents were secured to the tree using zip ties. Nylon zip ties were used extensively throughout TreeBot.
A piece of wood was placed into each of suspension points to keep the car from sitting on the ground under the weight of the Christmas Tree.
The skirt of TreeBot consisted of two pieces of cardboard from the box we were given cut into two half circles and then stapled together to form a semi-cone. It was covered with wrapping paper and garland was zip tied around the edge. The skirt was then zip tied to the Christmas Tree stand.
The stand that came with the Christmas Tree was zip tied to the car's frame.
Bolt's were used as a standoff to level the Christmas Tree stand on the car. Zip ties were again employed to secure the Christmas Tree stand to the bolt heads.
It was not terribly shocking to find that the cheap power inverter wasn't putting out the advertised voltage even though our input voltage met specifications. Regardless, it was enough to power a strand of Christmas lights.
This is the car frame after everything was removed.
The car has been returned to its former self.
