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Halloween Candy Distribution Robot Chute


I am not a hardware guy and my Brooklyn apartment lacks true workshop space but we were able to put together a reasonably well done candy chute robot able to deliver candy directly into Trick-or-Treat's candy bags. 

My wife wanted the robot to blink lights and wave an arm. I decided to use a servo motor driven by a Raspberry pi pico running MicroPython. The pico and MicroPython were chosen because I had them already from prior projects with my son. 









Legos, chopsticks and leftover screws. Only the best.




Cardboard, aluminum foil and Tupperware to protect the electronics. Those are the bags of candy and we managed to go through all of the candy by dark. This is what it looked like up on our balcony.







How do you get the candy down to the trick-or-treaters? A dryer duct. Last time we used plastic sheeting and zip ties. The $25 to get a duct was worth it. We tested it with fun sized chocolate, smarties, double bubble gum, skittles and m&ms. The bagged candy, skittles and M&Ms didn't work well so we waited until the other candy ran out and handed that candy out by hand.



This box was sized to allow kids to put their bags under the chute to collect their candy. This worked well. The push button signal stopped working, likely a short, but the arm kept waving until the candy ran out. 



And this is what it looked like. The blinking light wasn't working as expected but everything else worked well until the candy ran out.







 

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