We are big fans of Joe Grand! You may know him from his awesome designs like Emic 2 Text-to-Speech, Defcon badges, JTAGulator and many more on Grand Idea Studio. We loved watching Joe introduce cable TV audiences to hardware hacking on the Discovery Channel show Prototype This!
Here’s a fun project from Joe Grand that he has shared on OSH Park:
Creaturepod
The Creaturepod is a portable walkie talkie system that enhances children’s interactive play. It mimics the fictional Creaturepod from the popular children’s television show, Wild Kratts.
Joe writes: “The design features an Arduino Mini Pro 328, 2.2-inch TFT liquid crystal display (LCD), DRA818U voice transceiver module, electret condenser microphone, speaker, and buttons for channel/ frequency selection and push-to-talk capability. Bitmap images are stored on a microSD card and displayed on the LCD to indicate the currently selected channel. A 2000mAh Lithium-Polymer battery provides more than 20 hours of playtime before recharging is necessary.”
Documentation links:
- Block Diagram
- Schematic
- Bill-of-Materials
- Assembly Drawing
- Source Code: Arduino
- Pictures (Flickr)
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