3D Printed Westworld Rehoboam

Season 4 of Westworld came out last week, and I remembered that I built one of these before, but I broke it when it slid off the bookshelf.

As with the 3D printed keyboard project, this started from a Thingiverse design that I printed out.

I wanted to add Alexa capabilities to this project, so I found a USB microphone array on Amazon. Then, I had the idea to use the microphone itself as the stand for the project to sit on, so I had to reroute the USB connection through the center of the microphone.

Then, I took all of the ports off of the Raspberry Pi in order to make it easier to fit inside the project. This took more time than expected, and I knocked the WiFi capacitors off, but somehow, it still functions, so I'm happy.

I used two sets of WS2812 rings to light up the ball. Each light had a 3d printed mount that allowed a fiber optic strand to extend the light from each of the LEDs, and bring it out to the exterior of the ball.

Then, I used the SPI interface of the Pi to bit-bang the WS2812 protocol in order to have the lights twinkle.

The hardest part of this project was actually assembling the ball itself, as the fibers didn't want to bend, and a couple of them snapped in the process. This was prevalent as soon as I tried to add the top half.

I ended up just shoving them together with some superglue and I hoped for the best. Most of the lights stayed connected to the fibers and I think the end result is pretty cool.

The Alexa functionality isn't complete yet. I'm still working on hooking into the AVS events to change the patterns of the lights.