Beginner high school project - any help appreciated!

Hello, I’m a high school student interested in robotics and I just started my first project with some friends, but we’re complete beginners so we’re having trouble figuring out how to go about turning this idea into a reality…

Basically, we want to construct a speaker “ball” that we will be able to increase and decrease in size via bluetooth. We already have a spherical wireless speaker with bluetooth connectivity and we need to construct the rest of it.

So far, our best idea is to attach the speaker we have to a Hoberman sphere using elastic materials and also a bluetooth controlled antenna or antennas (aerials) that we will be able to extend and retract using a mobile app we will also build.

My friend is doing the coding and I’m responsible for the construction. I have little knowledge about anything like this and have just begun reading about robotics, so if someone can help point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone knows about what tools would be better to construct this or if this has been talked about before, please share any of it with me.

Thanks you! :slight_smile:

Had no idea what a Hoberman sphere was until I just googled it. Interesting project, is the idea that the sphere will ‘dance’ in size as you send music/sounds through it? Might be tough with traditional servo type control. Have you considered ‘muscle wires’ perhaps?
http://www.musclewires.com/
Just a thought. I don’t have any real world experience with them but I’ve always wanted to try em out.
Martin

The initial goal is to make the sphere adjust in size depending on the volume of the speaker inside of it. We’re thinking that the app could be connected to the bluetooth speaker (receiving the volume information) and also the bluetooth antenna (expanding/retracting the antenna depending on those values).

Thanks for the muscle wires link. They seem like an interesting solution, but I’m a bit confused about how they would work. I figured that something that can be connected via bluetooth would be the best option, but I’m open to anything else that can be achieved without a great knowledge of robotics, but some research and messing around. :slight_smile: