This little project was inspired by the Availabot from Schulze and Webb ( ). The Availabot is a puppet guy that rises to its feet when a friend comes online on IM, and falls over when the friend disappears. It`s a cool little toy, but it has 3 shortcomings: To make the device, you first need a push puppet. A push puppet is a small articulated cha
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racter composed of several body parts held together by several strings that run through them under tension. The strings are all connected to a large spring-loaded button under the base. When the button is pressed, the strings go slack and the puppet collapses. When the button is released, the strings pull the puppet back to its normal erect shape. More information on push puppets can be had at. Push puppets are cheap toys for small children, and can be found at most serious toy stores. Mine is a wooden dog from the "farm animals" series, made by Toys Pure. I paid 2. 77‚¬ for it and I find it much cuter than the Availabot guy. What`s more, it doesn`t "drop dead" like the Availabot guy when the button is pushed, but instead drops its head and bows its knees, which I find nicer. You will also need a servo : it should be strong enough to push the base of the push puppet. Mine`s a Protech B112, which provides a torque of 2. 5kg. cm and doesn`t cost too much. The spring in my push puppet pushes about 2kg and the button needs to move about 1cm, so the B112 is about right, although it does tend to strain a bit. A Pidgin plugin: Pidgin is the new name of the Gaim project since version 2. 0. 0, but the Gaim version of the plugin won`t work as-is, so a Pidgin-specific plugin is built To build them, type "make". You will need the GNU PIC Utilities to build the firmware ( ), and the Gaim or Pidgin development files (or package if your...
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