Arduinoa2z: Auto-blow bubbles with a Raspberry Pi-powered froggy

8 Bits and a Byte created this automatic bubble machine, which is powered and controlled by a Raspberry Pi and can be switched on via the internet by fans of robots and/or bubbles.

They chose a froggy-shaped bubble machine, but you can repurpose whichever type you desire; it’s just easier to adapt a model running on two AA batteries.

Raspberry Pi connected to the relay module

Before the refurb, 8 Bits and a Byte’s battery-powered bubble machine was controlled by a manual switch, which turned the motor on and off inside the frog. If you wanted to watch the motor make the frog burp out bubbles, you needed to flick this switch yourself.

After dissecting their plastic amphibian friend, 8 Bits and a Byte hooked up its motor to Raspberry Pi using a relay module. They point to this useful walkthrough for help with connecting a relay module to Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins.

Now the motor inside the frog can be turned on and off with the power of code. And you can become controller of bubbles by logging in here and commanding the Raspberry Pi to switch on.

A screenshot of the now automated frog in situ as seen on the remo dot tv website

To let the internet’s bubble fans see the fruits of their one-click labour, 8 Bits and a Byte set up a Raspberry Pi Camera Module and connected their build to robot streaming platform remo.tv.