Motorised Painting Handle

After adding “homing sensors” to the motorised painting handle and hacking some simple code together in Abode Animate (formerly Flash) our motorised painting handle finally comes to completion.

(yes, Unity would also be a fair cross-platform choice, but the final .apk files it creates are about twice the size of Flash-based apps)

At first I did a quick prototype in Unity3D complete with a fancy 3D model of the device, and some clever swipe/twist/rotate gestures to control it. But looking back at the original brief – to make painting more accessible to people with problems with their fine motor skills – I quickly realised that this wasn’t really appropriate.

So the interface is deliberately simple.

It has big, chunky buttons that you can prod with a stubby finger; when you press down, the motor(s) start to turn, when you lift off, they stop.

When the painting handle is in a position you’re happy with, and might want to return to again in the future, you can save the motor settings to the “bank” of slots. This gives you one-touch access to multiple pre-set, and entirely user-customisable positions – helping the user to quickly and easily get their model into position, ready for painting.

Another project ticked off.

Well, at least, complete. Well, fully working.

The last stage will be to re-create the device in acrylic (mdf is great for prototyping but just doesn’t quite have the same visual impact as laser-cut plastic), tidy up the firmware and post all the files online for you to make your own!