Flaws with the original cat ears

Posted in Making - September 18, 2010 - 0 Comment

My first version of the cat ears for people had these problems:

  • The servos are not as powerful as I would like, so they don’t move the ears as far down as I wanted.
  • The petting sensor on the headband between the ears was an afterthought, so instead of one cable leading from the headband to the controls, there are two.
  • The paw cables snap to the gloves with normal clothing snaps. If you dance like a spaz, they will get unsnapped.
  • The palm material of the gloves is insufficiently stretchy. This puts a bunch of load on the seams and, given time or big beefy hands, might cause the seams to fail.
  • The cable between the controller board and the gloves and hands has a non-locking, non-polarized connector in the middle of it. It is possible for this to get unplugged and then put back together backwards.
  • The cables are all absurdly long. It would fit me better if I was nine feet tall.
  • I’m not terribly pleased with the construction of the ears, particularly where the ear lining meets the headband.

I’ll be posting a bunch of links to the techniques used in making the ears and the code soon. It won’t be a full write-up of the process, but it will be enough pointers for someone who wants their own set of ears to do it fairly quickly.

If you can’t sew, solder, and operate simple hand tools, you may want to get a friend to help, but then you can make two sets, and bat your ears at each other.