Video link: Happy Holidays from the Family Animatronic - YouTube
Hello balena gurus,
I upgraded a bot project to include holiday lights, telling bot jokes in the window and singing one of five custom songs when folks donate to a local homeless shelter. It makes my neighbors laugh and makes me laugh when I hear someone going by to say, “WTF?!” xD
The bot is deployed via balena.io, running a Node express server that delivers audio and timed events to a web page (mouth movements, servo control, neo lighting control, relay control, etc.). That page loads/runs “headless” on another Pi (balena-dash: it just worked!) that’s connected to a sound bar that sits on the front porch. The bot also contains a Python socket.io server listening for animation events, which implements the actual bot movements/visuals.
The express server also contains a webhook endpoint that gets triggered by pledge.to when new donations happen at https://www.pledge.to/colosprings. I don’t expect a whole lot there, yet it has already helped with random training items and well, FUN!
I wish you a happy and successful holiday season.
