Control This Origami Flapping Bird With Your Phone

As I've shown in some of my other Instructables, servos and K'nex are wonderfully made for each other to create computer controlled machines that are limited only by your imagination. In this Instructable, I will show you how to take a well-known origami flapping bird (The Randlett Flapping Bird) and control it with an Arduino. I used the Arduino construction from "Bluetooth Control With A Web Page" and an Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit to drive this project but you can use any Arduino or Raspberry Pi or anything else that can control a mini servo. The crank and slider mechanism you will build is easily adaptable to a wide variety of moving origami constructions. I hope this sparks your imagination for combining origami art and computing.

Step 1: K'nex Servo

The first thing you will need to create for this project is this custom K'nex component. All you need to do is take a couple of right angle red K'nex pieces and mount them as shown on both sides of a hobby 9g micro servo. Note that the wire cable is at the top. I used epoxy as the adhesive to mount the K'nex pieces after first lightly sanding both the K'nex pieces and the servo surfaces to roughen up the surfaces for better adhesion. In a similar way, take any matching servo horn that came with the servo that has the maximum surface area available to mount onto a white K'nex star connector. Again lightly sand the surfaces of the K'nex connector and the servo horn for better adhesion before using epoxy to attach the pieces together. Let dry overnight. It is worth making a few of these at a time so you have them available for future projects.

After the pieces fully cure/dry, screw the horn/star connector to the servo.

Step 2: Create the Origami Flapping Bird

For this project, we are using the origami flapping bird designed by Samuel Randlett. There are many videos and books that describe how to make this bird. I would recommend Heap Art's YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZlwR8sYUTo but use the one that is easiest for you. You will want to use a 7 inch square piece of paper to fold this flapping bird. Make sure that it actually flaps well when you pull its tail before proceeding.

Now, cut out a small triangular piece of card stock as shown above and tape it inside the bottom of the tail. You will punch a hole through this tail and the card stock will provide a stiff support for the rubber band.

Use two pieces of tape as shown on head/neck of the bird allowing enough room to insert a white K'nex rod as shown. See how the white rod is insert to the front of the bird and a rubber band and K'nex connector is attached to the hole in the tail.

Put this origami bird assembly aside for later. You now have the custom pieces you will need for this project.

Step 3: Assemble the Base

The K'nex construction consists of the base, crank and slider, and the mounting platform for the servo and the crank and slider. Let's start with the base.

Step 4: Assemble the Crank Slider

Step 5: Servo Assembly

Step 6: Servo Assembly Platform

Add two blue rods and a yellow rod to the servo assembly from Step 5 as shown in the photos. Build the rest of the platform and the brace and put it all together.

Step 7: Platform for Crank Slider

Step 8: Install the Crank Slider and Lock It in Place

Step 9: Attach the Base

Step 10: Install the Origami

Step 11: Hook the Servo Up to the Arduino

Hook the servo up to your Arduino board or whatever computer controller you are using. You will want to move the servo between 0 and somewhere between 60 and 90 degrees depending on the size of your rubber band and the size of your origami. For this construction, I used 60 degrees. Consider using a Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit if you want to wirelessly and flexibly control your construction with your mobile phone or pad device. Check out my Instructable "Bluetooth Control With A Web Page" for instructions on how to easily do this. You can also use a Circuit Playground Express as described in my Instructable "Computer Controlled Tinkering Without Writing Code".

No computer? Check out my K'nex and Origami Flapping Bird Automata which only requires a K'nex motor.