Frankenbear was birthed out of a complete mistake. Originally, when I saw the bear at the Goodwill. Since he was holding a saxophone, I wanted him to sing the Careless Whispers melody and be named the Sexy Sax Bear. Unfortunately, when I cut him open, it just didn't work out as I wanted it to. The good thing is I had another idea. Since I had undone all the stitches, he looked very much like Frankenstein's monster. Since the common misconception is that Frankenstein is the monster, and not the actual inventor, I decided to go along with those who don't know better, at least for his names sake. That is how Frankenbear came to be. Also, I kept the same idea of the Sexy Sax Bear by writing a program with the Careless Whispers melody, just for fun.
He has come a long way since I first got my hands on him. After hours and hours of trial and error, frustration, bad codes, forgetting semicolons, and manual labor, I have finally got Frankenbear in working order. As you can partially see from the picture, the breadboard used for this isn't particularly clean looking, but the fact is that he works, and that I understand what is going on. I am probably most pleased at the way I was able to latch onto programming in C. It isn't that different from Java, which I have previously taken. Many of the concepts spill over from one to another. Although there were trials, it was all worth it to get to this point.
Frankenbear has 2 different codes to cycle through. Using serial input, you can play two melodies: the Tetris theme and the Careless Whispers saxophone melody. These codes also make him dance and the LED on his forehead light up. The way you tell Frankenbear what to do is serially input either 'a' or 'b' and there will be a short dialog between the bear and I. This project was a fantastic way to have a real application for the arduino, solidify breadboard and component placing technique, and learn how to code.
FRANKENBEAR IS ALIVE!!!
