Wheatley Menu

Presently embarking upon a project to create a 6 inch diameter Wheatly figure from Portal 2.
Wheatley Posts

Design Goals

Wheatley Articulation

Wheatley Mechanics

Wheatley’s brains

The Build

The Eye of Wheatley

Wheatley Images

 

I didn’t play the game much, but my daughter is in love with it, and I wanted to start a project that we could share.

  • Raspberry Pi as a show controller
  • Pan and tilt eye within the face
  • oLED eye for animation and personality
  • Separately articulated eyelids
  • “face” disk has pan, tilt, and limited roll
  • Articulated handlebar eyebrow things

So far, so good. In CAD land, everything fits.

This is Wheatley

 

Interior view showing the different articulations

inside the head there is a gimbal rocker arm that supports the face and articulates it in the roll, pitch and yaw axis’ of motion. A triad of servos affixed to the base do this with some cross talk which I hope to program out.

 

Eyelids, which share the axis of the face’s tilt articulation, are fully open-able, and each lid can close about 90% of the way.

 

Rear view of the eye gimbal. Rather than share the same axis as the face, I decidedd to move the eye’s rotational axis’ forward to allow the face to emote better.

 

“Eyebrow” handlebar detailing has begun. Articulating this axis is potentially difficult.

Expressive brow

 

Some work on external cosmetics that does not affect functioning has begun as well.

Wheatley noir

Wheatley Design Goals

7 thoughts on “Wheatley Menu

    • When I get the model up and running, I will likely sell the plastic through Shapeways. Presently, the cost of the plastic alone is ~$230 and then there is the Raspberry Pi and the servos. I am guessing overall cost to be <$500

      • So, what will Wheatley be able to do? And I mean everything that he will be able to do, because I would need to know what I’m spending $500.00 on.

        • Hi,
          I am designing Wheatley to have the following articulated axis’
          Handlebars are meant to move independently
          “face” pans and tilts +/-20 degrees
          “face” rolls +/- 40 degrees
          eyes pan and tilt about +/- 20 degrees
          eyelids open full, and each can close up to about 80%

          Understand I am not selling as a kit, or a completed unit.
          I don’t have any plans to monetize any software that I make, so at this point, I might as well release whatever I do to the world for free.
          Shapeways is just a great way to make the parts widely available, and I am fine tuning the design for their processes.

  1. Dude! I stumbled across your website while I was making my Animatronic Wheatley Puppet, but I just barely discovered the testing videos you posted. Completely amazing! I really hope you finish him and publish your work to the world. I really want one. A full size one. Based on your design, I don’t think it’d be too hard to scale it up (leaving the servo sizes the same). Thanks a million for being so inspiring! Check out mine here: animatronicwheatley.blogspot.com. I’ll definitely keep tabs on your site here and I hope to see an update soon. Thanks!

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