Enderman
It's Halloween and we love gaming. How about a candy containing scary Enderman?
For our Physical Computing project at NYU, my teammates and I decided to build an Enderman inspired by Minecraft. We wanted to create a model with speakers, neopixels and a time of flight sensor so that when one tries to grab candy, there's Halloween music, a change in eye colour as that of the in-game Enderman and a little bit of awe and scare.
Tools
Physical Computing, Arduino Nano 33 IoT, 3D Print, Fabrication, Circuit Design
Concept
Interaction Design/Exhibit Design
Halloween, gaming, and a spooky twist—what’s not to love?
For our Physical Computing project at NYU, we brought the eerie Enderman from Minecraft to life! Using speakers, neopixels, and a time-of-flight sensor, we created a candy dispenser with a thrilling surprise—reach for a treat, and you’ll trigger spooky Halloween music, glowing Enderman eyes, and just the right mix of awe and fright!
It’s not just candy—it’s an interactive Halloween scare straight out of the game! Dare to grab a treat?
The Process.
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The Process. *
Design Brief: To create a fun, interactive installation for Halloween using an Arduino and the principles of physical computing.
Step 1: Conception
Since the brief given to us was Halloween, we wanted to do something scary but at the same time, unconventional so we chose to take inspiration from video games.
Minecraft being one of the most popular games out there, an element from the game would be easily recognisable. We chose to recreate an Enderman considering that he is scary but at the same time, likeable with some interesting light, motion and sound mechanics. We chose to only build the upper half of the Enderman to make it easy to set it on a table.
Step 2: Making
Tools: Arduino, neopixels, buzzer speaker, 3D print, fabrication
We chose to break down the Enderman into 3 functionalities to make our task easier:
Light
Motion
Sound
All these 3 elements would be connected to a Proximity sensor such that if a person was to get near the Enderman, the green eyes of the character would turn magenta just like in the game, he would make a scary sound and his jaw would move up and down. My teammates took on light and motion respectively whereas I took on sound.
For light, at first, we tried to use normal LEDs connected to an Ultrasonic sensor. We did not get our desired results with that sensor so we switched to Time of Flight Sensor. We did not have Magenta LEDs so we used red at first but later we switched to Neopixels so that solved our issue with colour.
For motion, we had to 3D print gears in order to mount our servo motor for a linear motion but the sizing and the weight of the Enderman head posed a challenge of getting the desired motion.
For sound, we experimented with the tone function to create a creepy tune for the Enderman. We used an 8-ohm speaker with a MOSFET transistor for amplification, testing various resistors (220K, 100, 68, and 47 Ohm) ultimately settling on 47 Ohms to avoid a short circuit.
To experiment with sound, we went thrpugh various libraries to find something fitting for our Enderman. We found a code online that gave us a spooky melody using the tone function. It was as follows:
Sound Test
Our second trial included using an SD Card reader to read an MP3 file of an Enderman’s original sound from the game.
We used a model from Adafruit
We followed the instructions and converted our audio file into .WAV format however we were not happy with the end result as we felt like our own interpretation was missing from the piece and it appeared to be an 'obvious Enderman'.
We ultimately went ahead with the melody using Tone which worked out in the end because the feel of it was quite ‘polygon-y’ just like an Enderman. It also made a piece more unique and interpretative.
Step 3: Assembly
Tools: 3D print, fabrication, circuit design
We put together the 3D printed mechanical parts, neopixels and the speaker into a master circuit and stitched our codes together to then introduce a Time-of-Flight sensor connected to everything within the Enderman’s body which we fabricated using cardboard, paper, plastic and colours.
Final Solution
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Final Solution *
Final Showcase
Professors
“Great use of Time-of-Flight sensor!”
User
“I love Minecraft so this was a fun experience for me.”
User
“I thought it was interesting enough that there was candy but I was not expecting it to get mad at me!”
User