I think I may have been waiting my whole life to write that title.
For the littlebits bitWars Challenge we teamed up with fellow Minecraft adventurers rileypb and cgreyninja to re-create the Trash Compactor Scene from Star Wars. The walls of the trash compactor were controlled by redstone and pistons activated by a cloudBit that allowed real-world interaction with the scene. We also included an automatic silverfish generator (shiver), a lot of random leaves and item trash, and a villager to play Chewie.
Here’s the final video. Watch the inset in the lower-left to see the real-world controller activate the Minecraft-world pistons that control the trash compactor walls.
On the Minecraft side, we used the the bitCraft mod to obtain a cloudBit block, which then powered a piston wall from the outside of the trash compactor room. To learn more about how you can real-world interact with Minecraft-world items, check out this video from TheDiamondMinecart.
The housing for the real-world controller is our 3D-printed Remote Control Pants model, which we designed to corral the unwieldy string of littleBits used to power and interact with the cloudBit. This two-piece print allows you to tuck battery and cords underneath and arrange accessible controls on the top.
The “pants” are designed to work for a dual-slider remote control setup, a one-slider cloudBit configuration, and lots of other things. Shaped like Minecraft pants, natch. Here they are in dual-slider mode:
The little green bands you see around the connector magnets are our littleBits Connector Band prints. littleBits assemblies are notorious for falling apart and making you crazy, but these simple bands print in just one minute and are easy to put on and take off. I think these bands have the highest ultility-to-creation-effort ratio of any model I’ve ever made.
Here are the download links for the pants and bands:
- Remote Control Pants on Thingiverse: www.thingiverse.com/thing:1212694
- littleBits Connector Band on Thingiverse: www.thingiverse.com/thing:1194899
Both models were made in Tinkercad, so you can “Copy and Tinker” to modify them here:
- Editable files on Tinkercad: www.tinkercad.com/things/hfYLo6gDuSp-remote-control-pants-for-littlebits
UPDATE: We didn’t win the bitWars Challenge, but check out the amazing people that did!
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