The Funky Chicken was created during a series of workshops that were given as part of the larger project “Interactive Sensory Objects Designed for and by People with Learning Disabilities”:

It was designed by Rumena, a student from the Reading College LLD/D course (people with learning disabilities) who attended the workshops on a regular basis. She made the papier mache chicken, painted it and added the frills and ornaments, and wanted it to sit inside a basket but flap it’s wings and cluck. We helped her to complete this artwork by adding the necessary electronics including an Arduino Uno, Adafruit Waveshield, speaker and a servo to make the wings flap.

The whole flapping/clucking of the chicken is triggered using a sonar attached to Arduino Uno. Moving within 1m of the chicken will trigger it:

 In the image below the sonar is hooked up to the Arduino Uno, and the Arduino is connected to the servo controller (not shown). The sonar is a very inexpensive off-the-shelf HC-SR04, which has a range of about 3m.

Here’s the video with the chicken at work:

Codebreaker is the exhibition started last year at  the Science Museum of London and celebrating  the centenary of the birth of computing pioneer Alan Turing.

Hirsch&Mann were commissioned to create a “series of exhibits which demonstrated and recognized the progress in computing while at the same time representing a spirit of engineering and innovation” .

They created three installations that demonstrated 3 programming principles:

LOOPING: A spinning rotor with LEDs on it -> creating POV patterns all controlled by 30 arcade style illuminated switches.

CONDITIONALS: A version of Wolfram’s cellular automata – user was able to choose the result of the child node once the parent node conditions were met

VARIABLES: A mechanical tree – the branch angles were controlled by sliders on the console. Slider A controlled 1 angles at the base of the tree, slider 2 controlled the next 2 angles, slider 3, the next 4 angles and slider 4 the final 8 sliders.

Each installation has a light box which is revealed as soon as you press the BIG GLOWING button on the console. This turns on the lightbox – which has simplified pseudo code and essentially allows people to “step into” the code. Each line that is currently running is highlighted and then you see the result on the installation.

The whole point of these installations was to show where we have come since Turing’s time and stepping on his shoulders.

If you have the chance to visit the exhibition (it’s free!) or watch the video below you will see that at the center of each console there is an Arduino UNO.

[Via: homepage of the workshop and Zoe Romano's blog]