Moving Google Home - Ishimaki Hack-a-thon 2018

During Ishimaki Hack-a-thon 2018, Google Home which moves itself based on the voice recognition feature was made. As the video suggests, it is slightly unclear whether the final creation is a moving Google Home or a Robot with Google Home installed on it. However I was emotionally invested in the creation as the contraption was working and moving while only being made in a day and a half.

The 2018 Ishimaki Hack-a-thon started off chaotically as - the fasteners on my beloved Arcteryx backpack melted from the heat in trunk of the taxi, running off to Tokyu Hands to acquire duct tape and super glue to fix the bag, missing multiple bullet trains because of this, and me arriving extremely late as a result.

Because I was late to the scene, I had my friend do the awkward pitch in place of me for day 1. The pitch was awkward as my friend had no clue about the details of my idea for the project, forcing him to ramble about information related to Raspberry Pi and Google Home. Much to my appreciation, 3 people joined for the project after the pitch. I joined the 3 members 30 minutes after the pitch when the task had already begun. On this day, we introduced ourselves within the team, talked about my desire to create a Google Home that moves, plans about how to carry this out and about how the final product should look like, which led to the time limit being reached. A get together was promptly organised for our team, where thereafter I lost to the temptation to have a drink with the team, ending day 1.

Hungover and lacking sleep, day 2 started with uncertainty as I soldered a condenser microphone thinking about whether the large amount of development needed will be achieved. Despite the initial worries, the project was coming to action as by midnight of day 2, progress was made as far as it has in the video. The creation process is published on my blog via this link.

The debugging process was exciting as the final system used 2 Arduinos, a motor, a microphone, LED and etcetera, of which the 2 Arduinos and Raspberry Pi required programming and going through the settings of DialogFlow created a varied process.