Someone sent me this hilarious video, and it started me thinking...
I frequently attend various vendor trade shows, and invariably, the vendors hand out useless trinkets as advertising... I usually do one of three things with these...
1) anything electronic gets tossed into the parts bin,
2) anything of a "toy" nature goes to my children (yes, I got that order straight)
3) everything else gets tossed them into the garbage.
So I happen to have a pair of these "electronic devices" in my parts bin. I think they are commercially known as "Hexbot Nanos"
They would effectively replace the toothbrush head and pager motor in the above video....
But I also received one of these little wind up distractions to the left here...
Mechanical spring wound clockworks makes him do a little dance...
For some strange reason, he hadn't quite made it to the kids yet... hmmm....
It looks like those Hexbots might just fit the bottom of his feet.....
Maybe I could run them directly from an ATtiny84 as in THIS blog...
yes, I know I should add a transistor to drive each motor, but when I looked up the current draw on a free running pager motor, low and behold they are around 20-40ma... well within the range of the ATtiny84 pins capability.
Current and RPM specs:
| Voltage | RPM | Current (free) | Current (stall) |
| 1.5V | 9700 | 17.5mA | 120mA |
| 3.0V | 18420 | 22mA | 260mA |
| 5.0V | 31900 | 32.1mA | 420mA |
Add a Sharp IR proximity sensor onto his chest, a small LiPo battery on his back for balance, the gratuitous leds on the head, and I think we just may have ourselves the next project.... It doesn't get much simpler...
(ok, ok... yes, I'll likely wire in a connector for the AVR programmer... but that's it... well... and maybe find another pager motor to replace the spring wound mechanism that makes him dance... but THATs it... really...
maybe...)
I thought I would put this picture in, just to show the scale... 
References and prior art:
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