LEGO WeDo Spin Art Turntable

I was inspired by a tweet I read.
My son and I used the directions in my book to build a robust platform for a spin art turntable.



I pointed out the pieces we needed and he connected the parts with a little bit of my help. 

We connected the LEGO WeDo USB hub to his One Laptop Per Child XO-4 laptop. He has Scratch installed on the XO. I wrote a Scratch project to run the motor at half speed by pressing the "h" key and full speed by pressing the "f" key. The space bar immediately stopped the motor.



I 3D printed some nozzles to make fine drips of paint. I designed them in Tinkercad, remixing a bottle cap design to include the hollow nozzle with a 2mm opening.



I watered down the paint and used my new 3D printed nozzles. 




Part of the project became learning where the "h" and "f" keys were located on the keyboard to start and stop the motor in Scratch.




Once the motor was spinning we were ready to paint! We dropped a little paint onto the spinning turntable and continued to water down the paint until it happily flowed on the turntable.



Together, we created a masterpiece!


The adaptability of the LEGO WeDo turntable whose build instructions are included in my book makes it a perfect project from which to launch other projects.

Comments

OzTeacher said…
I noticed you're using Scratch on an XO. I haven't been able to work out a way to install Scratch on my students' XOs given that it isn't available through Google Play. I would love to be able to do projects like this using student XOs and Scratch and was wondering if you had a tip as to how to use Scratch on XOs?
Josh Burker said…
Have you tried dowloading Scratch directly, as opposed to through Google Play?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Scratch#Download
jnt said…
Hi Josh
I cannot seem to figure out exactly whicj legos you are using in the Spin Art Bot. Are there directions posted somewhere?

Thanks
Josh Burker said…
WeDo.

There are directions on how to build a LEGO WeDo turntable that could be adapted to be a spin art machine in my book: http://amzn.com/0989151182
Greetings. I'm a Lego fan who lives in Turkey. I wanted to submit a record player project to Lego Ideas website. But, i had a major problem. I couldn't figure out how to get a motor worked in different speeds... Then i ran into your website and saw your solution. My question is, would you consider to become co-designer for my project? Thank you.
Josh Burker said…
Sure! What do you need for me to do?