Chimerical Toast

Artist and professor Tiffany Sum hired me to help her make a robotic toaster art installation.

Chimerical Toast reverses a domestic object and activity into a bodily regiment with a basic food item. Your physical presence, your diligence of gesture, your commitment to transformation, will conform a piece of grain into the charming and fanciful impression.

My job was to take an off the shelf toaster and reverse engineer it so that it could be safely controlled with a micro-controller. This was challenging, but I managed to make it work with an Arduino, a motor, and some switches. I then hooked up a pair of range sensors which acted as the controls. Tiffany created the enclosure and hand-shaped mold. The project was exhibited in an art gallery in China.

Materials: Toaster, Arduino, DC Motor, Switches, Ultrasonic Range Sensors
More info: http://www.sumworks.com/chimerical-toast/
Source Code: https://gist.github.com/rchrd2/81c371053fdf74798661