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Arduino Talking Dog Buttons

I’ve been following Christina Hunger’s Instagram posts and web page about her dog Stella and her board of buttons that enable her dog Stella to talk. It’s very incredible to see a real conversation between a dog and her owners. She’s using “Answer Buzzers” that you can get from Amazon, four buttons for $20 to $25. Each button can have a short phrase, or one word recorded on it, and Christina puts them on a piece of cardboard with a label near each one. Stella learns which buttons are what based on the position of the button on the board.

My Talking Dog Button board, made with an Arduino Mega and a 24″ x 48″ board that will hold up to 32 buttons.
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My wooden clock built from plans

Several years ago, I built a wooden clock from plans from Clayton Boyer. I really liked Solaris, but decided I better start with Simplicity, which from its name, means it should be a bit simpler to build. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get it running, so thought I better start simple! It went rather well. I ordered the plans, then I just cut out the paper and glued them onto the wood. From there, it is basically cutting around the lines. I used oak and baltic birch plywood for the gears. I used a scroll saw to cut out the gears and a lot of the other parts. It worked pretty well, but I think a band saw works even better for the gear teeth. The gears aren’t really as difficult as you’d think to cut out.

I did make some copies of the plans and cut out several practice gears from cheap plywood before I tried my hand on one of the final gears from baltic birch. I did make a couple mistakes and had to make a couple pieces over, but for the most part, the clock came together fairly well.

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