Modifying Toys

As a hobby, I like playing with Arduinos and having the ability to control real world devices like sensors and motors. Recently I decided to add a Cylon/KITT eye to my son's old robot toy:

First I bought an Arduino Pro Micro and an addressable LED strip. I cut the LED strip to fit into the robot's head, wrote a sketch to simulate Cylon eye and tested the setup:

Then I made sure that it worked with 3 AA batteries:

Then I squeezed in the LED strip into the robot's head and tested once more:

Then I verified that it worked with the robot's batteries:

Finally I assembled the whole robot:

The hardest part was fitting the pro micro and all the extra cables into the robot's body.

What's the point of all of this you ask? First of all, I like doing such things. And secondly... Watch Eli's video: The Value of "Hobbies" for Tech Professionals.