Process

The process of building Timmy was pretty daunting to me, as someone who considers himself to be first and foremost a User Interface designer. Coming into this project, the only two things I was at least somewhat confident in was my ability to code, and my ability to glue googly eyes. However, thanks to great guidance from Daragh and Zhenfang, I was able to become confident enough with hardware to the point where I was able to follow some very basic Arduino cookbooks to build out the Timmy’s “brain.” This project was my first time soldering, my first time programming an Arduino, and my first time disassembling a home appliance with the intention of modifying it.

Due to my inexperience, I knew I had to develop my project around my limited abilities. So, I stuck to cookbooks and examples I found on the Arduino docs to see what I could work with. One of these early explorations was a program that visualized the dominant primary color of an object using the color sensor and the onboard LED.

Through my tests, I found that color sensor mounted on the Arduino responded best to colored light. I was predominantly using my phone’s screen to produce said light, and through this repeated action of “showing” the color sensor my phone - the idea for Timmy Toaster emerged.

From there, Timmy’s brain was a matter of connecting the LED strip to the Arduino with the breadboard, and repurposing some code.

Surprisingly, what I found hardest was disassembling the toaster. These appliances are really not meant to be tinkered with, and I was surprised by how much I had to actually break in order to simply get the plastic off of the central heating component. Unsurprisingly, I was the only one in the class who was crazy enough to try disassembling the toaster, but I was happy with the effect I achieved.