Roku has officially escaped the bounds of the computer screen! Here is one cell of Roku working on it’s own. This proves that I can make these (I’ve made 2 cells so far), that the lighting looks awesome and the motion is very controllable. The button pressing action is added, but not to my satisfaction. I’m using the guts from old keyboards to act as the buttons, which is almost working. Re-using the electrical components of the keyboards proved to be really hard; I believe my next attempt will be with reed switches.

So this is what I have before my Thanksgiving vacation. When I return it will be time to hit the ground running and get all of them made. In addition to getting button-pressing working, I also need to be able to control more than 1 at a time… This is the real challenge. I’m completely new to Arduino and hardware in general, so I don’t know my constraints or what’s possible. I’ve heard rumor that controlling upwards of 20 servos from one Arduino isn’t hard to do as long as I’m okay with sacrificing some accuracy. I can deal with that. It looks like I’ll need a heafty power supply in addition to figuring out where that fits into the whole puzzle.

Over the break I’ll be finalizing the cell pattern, and material choices. Translating these models into laser-cut templates and ordering 24 of everything. If everything goes to plan without too much trouble I’ll be showing rapid Roku process and working shots of Roku in action by the New Year.