Stupid Pet Trick : Make It Rain Machine

What I ended up doing for my Stupid Pet Trick was completely different from my initial idea.

From the 2 ideas that I had I started on the camera idea and actually got it up and running. How it worked ; a motion sensor triggered a camera to take a photo. I was pretty happy that I got it to work since I took a camera a part and replaced the shutter release with my own button that was connected to the Arduino and a motion detector but I wasn’t happy with the project as a whole. It wasn’t fun and everyone around me in the shop seemed to be having a lot of fun with their Pet Trick. I sat around sulking and it hit me! I wanted to create a Make-It-Rain machine. For those of you not familiar with what Make-It-Rain means, it is a term often used in Hip Hop music to describe the act of throwing money around in a lavish display of wealth.

Here is what I’m talking about :

#FeelMeh? Ok good.

The idea was to create a platform where cash could be placed and a DC motor with a custom propellor would swipe each bill of the platform 1 by 1. A potentiometer would control the speed of rain making.

Step 1 was to get the circuit to work before I started constructing the box that held the cash, motor and arduino.

Now came the fun part, constructing the device. I bought a bunch of wood from Pearl Paint and started putting it together :

That part was easy. Constructing the propeller was the real challenge as it needed to take into account the height of the cashed stacked and have enough flexibility and friction to swipe each bill off individually.

I tried a fixable piece of cardboard that I attached rubber strips at the end of.

A few tests proved that this method worked however it didnt do too well with a higher stack of cash. I replaced it with a much more flexible plastic propeller that I had cut at the ends to make it easier to spin on a higher stack. This proved more effective for a higher stack but did not do well when there were only a few bills left.

I decided to finished the rest of the case and come back to this problem.

In the end after trying a few different materials it became clear that the problem wasn’t the propellor but the motor. It did not have enough torque to spin while the stack was high. I decided to finish the project as is and work on a second version of it down the line. This is what the finished product looked like.

Shirt video of the Make-It-Rain Machine in action :