/ada-dollhouse-controller

Primary LanguageC++

Ada's Dollhouse Controller

Written and (C) 2020 Andy Swing

Provided under the terms of the MIT license.

Overview

Ada's Dollhouse Controller adds advanced lighting and sound effects to a custom built wooden dollhouse fitted with a number of pushbuttons, LED light fixtures, and a speaker. It is built around a Arduino microcontroller and various I/O modules placed on a custom, hand-wired motherboard. Everything is powered by an internal rechargeable battery pack and includes auto-off features to ensure many hours of play time between recharges. Power and programming ports are accessible externally to allow for easy modification down the road.

Dollhouse Front Dollhouse Open Dollhouse Attic

Theory of Operation

Turning On

  • Press the red main power button on the end of the roof
  • A chime will play and the system will turn on
  • The button lights up to tell you status:
    • Slow fade in and out: system is on
    • Fast blinking: low battery
    • Off: power is off, obviously :)

Turning Off

Manually

  • Press the red power button and everything will shut off

Automatically

  • The lights will turn off after 1 hour of no activity
  • The system will power down after 1h 10m of no activity
  • Any interaction (aka button press) will restart these shutdown timers
  • Note that once the system power is off, the red power button is the only way to turn the system back on is via the main power button

Charging and Battery Life

  • The battery should last 12+ hours with all lights on (many hours of play!)
  • The system will play a chime & announcement and blink the power button when the battery gets low
  • You don't have to wait for the low battery indicator to charge - it's good practice to plug it in every few weeks to top it off (better for battery life)
  • Charge port is a large type-B USB connector on the roof end (small one is for programming)
  • A full charge takes ~12 hours to complete, so leave plugged in for a while
  • Totally fine to charge and use at the same time (designed specially to do this!)

Lights

  • Each room has a light fixture and pushbutton light switch
  • Press the button to toggle the light state and the light will fade on/off accordingly

Sound Effects

  • The doorbell rotates through a set of 5 different greetings (more can be added easily!)
  • Each room has a sound too, triggered either when the lights are turned on or off depending on the room
  • If a sound is already playing, a new one will not interrupt it (idea was to avoid super annoying button mashing...)

Construction

Schematics are located in the 'schematics' sub-folder. Two of the modules needed some small tweaks.

TODO: Describe more about how the circuits work and were built. Also include a BOM.

History

  • 1.0 - 2021/01/03 - TheOriginalAndrobot

    • fully implemented functionality
    • moved to a more advanced power control scheme that powers down completely after a timeout

  • 0.9 - 2020/12/31 - TheOriginalAndrobot

    • first mostly working version