Project 6: Your Own Talking and Loving Teddy Bear 

By Group 4 Nataly Vasconcelos, Danai Syzdykova, Ghada Shainan, Carsen Rae Helms

 

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Project Brief: Your Own Talking and Loving Teddy Bear

Imagine entering your home and your Teddy Bear greeting you with a welcoming message or with lighting up eyes. Also, it will be great if the Teddy Bear is not so welcoming to other members in the house (just for fun!). For this, you are encouraged to use an RFID tag and reader with a choice of tags one of them being your own hence the Teddy realising it is you and delivering a friendly message! You need to use at least one other tag that is no yours and hence delivering unwelcoming messages and maybe red eyes! Remember, you do not have to use a real Teddy bear but you can use other prototyping options.

Overview:

For decades, teddy bears have been a favourite amongst children’s toys. However, with the recent technological advances in the video game industry, old-school children’s toys have struggled to remain the preferred toys on market. In light of this, we have re-purposed the traditional teddy bear into a plush version of an electronic toy that interacts with the child in different ways.

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Project Plan

Purpose:

Our intent is to create an easy-to-use mobile teddy that responds to certain RFID tags with specific sounds, songs and lights.

Target Audience:

We are mainly targeting children aged 3-9, however, by customising the teddy bear to each user’s individual purpose such as an alarm clock, story teller, daily reminder, and other therapeutic uses, we are able to appeal to older kids and people diagnosed with dementia.

We also wanted to develop the teddy further so that the songs it sings would be depending on the time of day, so at night a lullaby would be sung, and in the morning an alarm would go off. This would also take the blame off the parents in the morning and can be used as an easy learning toy.

Market Research: 

The effectivity of the functionalities of our design were determined by the research done on current, interactive toys on market.

Build-a-bear /link/

Furby

Components:

• RFID tag/card
• RFID card reader
• Arduino board
• Jump wires
• Speaker
• LEDS: red and green
• Battery: 1 x 5V battery

Goals:

• Create an interactive teddy bear that responds to each child individually with assistants from a wearable RFID tag in the form of a sweat band, necklace or bracelet.
• Make it as interactive as possible, add lights as well as sounds.
• Make it play specific songs at night to relax the child, and have an alarm go off in the morning
• Make the playlist customisable to each child/person for intended use at place of assembly(where you buy the bear)

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Task List:

1. Brainstorming and Research – all
2. Product design and functionality – all
3. Components assembly – all
4. Lo-fi paper prototype – Nataly
5. Storyboard – Ghada
6. Pseudo Code – Ghada and Carsen
7. Blog documentation – Danai
8. Pictures/videos – Danai and Nataly
9. Code – all
10. Test components – all
11. Circuit layout and Diagrams – Carsen
12. Prototyping – all
13. Testing and debugging – Nataly, Danai
14. Final component assembly – Nataly
15. Presentation – Nataly, Carsen, Danai
16. Design blog – All
17. Maker’s Manual – Carsen

 

Gantt Chart:

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Meeting 1: 14th November

During this meeting the team deliberated over which project we wanted to work on. After carefully assessing the project brief list, we decided that we were interested in working on the Teddy Bear most as well as another idea (dollhouse) that was submitted along with the teddy bear project. For each idea the team brainstormed on the components needed and what function they will perform to appeal to each members skills and abilities.

 

Meeting 2: 19th November

After receiving a feedback email from Akram and Laurissa on our two ideas, the team finally decided on pursuing the teddy bear project. During this meeting, the team brainstormed the different purposes for the bear, the implementation of each component to fulfil its purpose, schedule, and tasks were assigned. The components were ordered during this meeting (speaker, SD card, RFID reader + tags, battery).

Possibile uses:

• daily reminder of child’s tasks/good habits (brush your teeth, go do homework, etc.) using Arduino timer
• therapeutic and soothing toy for people of all ages (relief of anxiety/stress) by including playlist of therapeutic sounds and music
• lullaby player to put young children to sleep
• alarm to wake a child up for school with the use of the parent’s RFID tag
• night light can be used for children and for reading in adult use (mobile for comfort) using LEDs
• story-time/audio book reader for children and adults using SD card and speaker

 

Meeting 3: 26th November

Components arrived and the team’s goal was to get each component to work individually. The team split the task of getting the RFID to work separately and the speaker to work separately.

Meeting 4: 3rd Dec

The intent of this meeting was to assemble all the working components together and come up with the pseudo code. Also setting up the Arduino timer for the bear was meant to be done during this meeting. It was cancelled because one of the members with the speaker could not come in due to health reasons.

 

Meeting 5: 6th Dec

The RFID reader was working separately and the speaker and SD card were working separately, however, during assembly there were many complications. One of the members could not be present for the meeting, however, the hardware was left with the rest of the team. Rest of the meeting was a bit hectic as the team did not have all parts of the code(waiting for the member to send it in). Part of the hardware was assembled halfway and to fully understand how to finish it was time consuming. EC form was submitted and we waited for the deadline extension.

Eventually a simpler version using one breadboard and less hardware was assembled as a backup plan.

 

Meeting 6: 9th Dec

Deadline extension could not be granted and during this meeting the team met up with Vivek to seek assistance. The team was advised to use two Arduino boards and have a slave and master to get the speaker with SD card and RFID reader to communicate. This was very ambitious as none of the members had enough experience to realise this idea. Most of the day was spent on research and trial and error to get the two Arduino boards to work with their components.

 

Eventually this idea was soiled and the team chose to stick to the back up plan of using one Arduino and one breadboard without a timer.

Red and green LEDs were implemented for negative and positive feedback and all the hardware was put inside the teddy bear for final testing.

Team started working on final presentation.

Meeting 7: 10th Dec

After uploading the program to the Arduino, the team implemented a 5V battery to make the teddy bear mobile and more consumer friendly.

Final presentation was completed and practised.

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Final product:

For our final product the RFID tag is personalised with a sticker heart on it so that the child knows to bring it close to the teddy’s heart ,it would sing out Brahms lullaby and corresponding green LEDS would shine through the teddy’s skin(positive feedback). The parent would be given the card, so when they bring it close an alarm would go off with corresponding red LEDS would shine through the teddy’s skin(negative feedback).

Further development:

With more time we’d develop it further depending on the time, the teddy can play specific songs (such as festive songs) or give certain messages. The Teddy can prompt the child with phrases such as “Time to brush our teeth!” Or a yawn followed with “I’m ready for bed”, also with enough time and a big enough team, we would love to aim this teddy as children with certain medication requirements, so at specific times the teddy would tell them to take they medication. This could be further developed to appeal to those of an older age with dementia, as a teddy bear is a nice object to have around the house and would be a positive attribution.

Outcomes:

We are happy with our outcome as it’s simply yet effective. We managed to get a teddy bear big enough to fit the whole Arduino board inside, and we were able to attach a battery to the board after having uploaded the code for the demonstration we had. This enabled us to sew up the hole we had created through which we had placed the Arduino board. This means that a child would be able to take their teddy anywhere they desired, especially to a sleepover where they would need to feel at home.

It’s very desirable for kids, handing over the RFID card to the parents for the alarm sound will take the blame can be taken off the parents for waking them up. And help create healthy sleeping patterns for the child.

 

Maker Manual

Step 1: Gather your Materials

For this build, you will need a few things:

• Medium sized plush toy
• Sewing thread 
• Sewing needle
• Scissors
• Arduino uno board
• Bread board
• Jumper wires
• RFID sensor 
• Two RFID tags
• LED’s
• Necklace chain or sweat band wristlet 
• Speaker
• 5V Battery

 

Step 2: Circuit Assembly

Let’s get the hard stuff out of the way and assemble the circuit! Using the breadboard layout sheet and the list of components.

 

Step 3: Add to Plush

Now the hard part is over, let get your Plush talking!

• Take your scissors and cut along the back seem of your Plush
• You will need to take some of the stuffing out to make room for the circuit board
• First take the RFID scanner and place inside the Plush
• Sew the scanner to the underside of plush’s outer layer, this allows it to be as close as possible to read tag
• Then place the rest of the board inside with the LED pins facing outwards as much as possible 
• Place some of the stuffing back inside to stabilise board
• Thread sewing needle and sew the back of your Plush back up

Optional: leave small slit open at bottom to allow easy access for board to be uploaded with new songs

• Thread RFID tag on chain or sew onto swear band wristlet

 

Step 4: Have Fun

Enjoy! Wear the tag around and engage with your new singing friend as often as you want or just at bedtime!

Parents don’t forget to option to use the other card as an alarm system for those munchkins that are morning birds!

 

The Code:

At the beginning, we created our first piece of code based on how the RFID reader worked. We hooked it up to the Arduino board to test it and see how it works. For this we had to get the number of our blue RFID tag which is ’49 A3 57 59′.  As can be seen in the code below, in the function loop() a new card is constantly being read, essentially looking for the tag. With this we could tell it to play a certain song using the function playd() when the correct tag is read, and when the card is read it’ll play an alarm sound.

To show our ideas of further development, we decided to create a second piece of code that would play one song with the tag, and another song with the card. This ties in with our plans of making the songs customisable to each owner of the teddy. As can be seen below, the tag will prompt the function playd() which will play the pink panther theme tune and the card will play the function silent() which is silent night.