This is my tiny wiener, Finley. She’s a total ball-chasing fiend. I’m talking zero chill—she’ll keep going until she practically keels over. Doesn’t matter if you’re working, relaxing, or in the middle of something important—she’ll nudge your arm, whine, and give you that look until you toss the ball. And the moment you do, this little wiener loses her mind and goes even harder. Honestly, she’s kind of a relentless ball hog, but let’s be real: with a face like that, how am I supposed to say no?
She’s also got a thing for lights. Christmas lights, reflections off a watch, a random glint on the wall—if it’s shiny and she can chase it, she’s all in. Honestly, if it’s even remotely sparkly, this wiener’s obsessed.
I’m starting to think I need to combine her two loves into some kind of ultimate play contraption: maybe an automatic ball launcher that also shoots out beams of light. Okay, probably not a disco ball, but something that throws a bunch of moving lights around the floor. Picture one of those dollar-store light projectors on a timer, paired with a wiener-sized foot switch. Now that would be the dream toy for a light-chasing, ball-crazed little wiener like Finley
thePlan
I need to design and fabricate an automatic ball thrower with a light tower and a foot switch that doesn’t have very much resistance on it. I’ll also need to figure out and set limits for how often the lights and ball thrower can be activated.
My initial thought is a a shallow funnel with a motorized ratcheting spring loaded mechanism in the middle to throw the ball. It’ll need a way to know the ball is there and a limit switch to know when it’s fully “charged”. The whole thing will either be powered by a cheap ESP32 or a Tiny RP2040.
The tower with the lights is a whole other part that will either be really easy or really hard.
I’ll hopefully have some time this weekend to actually model this out. We’ll find out…
weekendUpdate #1
I’ve been thinking about this the last couple days, and I think I want to do paracord attached to the ball thrower that is pulled downward as the paracord wraps around a drum that’s rotated by a small DC motor with a decent gear reduction. The whole thing can be 3d printed and I can use a small cheap motor. I figure I should make this easy to configure delays and stuff on. Maybe a 5 position switch for number of activations per hour? Do one for the ball thrower and one for the lights.
weekendUpdate #2
Weekends need to be a week long. I honestly don’t even know what happened yesterday and somehow it’s already time to go back to work tomorrow. That said, I’m an idiot. I realized this morning I could just put teeth on the drum like it’s a flywheel and not have to have a whole gear set attached to a shaft and figure that whole mess out. The drum and motor can just freewheel. That’s how we’ll stop it. We hit a limit switch and it shuts the motor off and lets it go. With enough spring power, the gear reduction shouldn’t matter much. We’ll have to lube the hell out of it and make sure the gear teeth are fairly smooth, but we “should” be ok.
weekendUpdate #3
I really need to put my 3d printer back together. These are things I should have done before I started. I guess I technically haven’t “started”. Might as well fuck off on a side quest for a bit.
Step 1: Find all the parts… Yep, that’s not happening tonight.
Tomorrow it is. We’ll all pretend that’s actually going to happen.