The MagPi - February 2020

W

hile Brussels-based makers Dane and

Nicole enjoy meeting people, they

find that endlessly repeating the

stories behind their projects at events can be

exhausting. “We presented our tech projects at a

number of events in the past year, and we noticed

we kept repeating ourselves throughout the day,

giving the same talks and same explanations over

and over again to the people visiting our booth,”

Dane

& Nicole

Two makers

that create

tremendously

terrible tech, which

they happily share

with you on their

YouTube channel

called ‘8 Bits and

a Byte.

hackster.io/

8bitsandabyte

MAKER

explains Nicole. “Whilst it’s definitely fun to talk

to so many people, it’s also very tiring and so we

thought it would be great to create an assistant, of

sorts, to do this repetitive work for us.”

Felt fusion

Enter DARVA, a cute little animated robot who just

loves to chat, and who runs off a Raspberry Pi 4.

Dane says, “DARVA was made by first cutting and

sewing all the separate parts of the robot out of

felt. Then we took a picture of all these robot parts

and cut them out using photo editing software [...].

To bring DARVA to life, we created a webpage (with

HTML canvas and JavaScript) to which we added all

these photographs and animated them.”

Over the period of a week or two, Dane and

Nicole’s idea really took shape. The most

difficult part of the project was the touchscreen

orientation: “As the felt robot is standing upright,

we thought it would be best to use the screen

in portrait mode,” says Nicole. “Whilst you can

easily change the screen rotation on Raspberry

When the screen

is touched, the

robot responds with

various phrases and

random movements

This amicable automated assistant was designed to help its makers

explain their projects at tech events. Nicola King investigates

DARVA:

The Event Assistant

They have upcycled

an old photo frame for

an attractive surround

for the touchscreen

The touchscreen is used

in portrait mode, with the

images rotated in Raspberry

Pi’s landscape mode

The animated robot is a

digitised version of a felt model

and tells event-goers about

Dane and Nicole’s projects

12 magpi.cc DARVA: The Event Assistant

PROJECT SHOWCASE