To interact with people via the Internet, Twitr_janus needs to be able to see.
Here is a webcam-enabled eyeball, made from a Microsoft LifeCam, a deodorant ball and a pen refill...
Twitr_janus needs one eye to be able to see who is looking at it. The eye was made from a Microsoft LifeCam.
This can be driven by Skype. Skype allows you to start a video call with a remote computer, which means the eyeball can be turned on at will from anywhere (and using Skype apps on phones etc.!). And so...
The LifeCam is a reasonably good webcam. The camera is housed in a convenient cylinder that readily fits a sawn off deodorant ball!
The ball was hacked from a standard roll-on deodorant ball
The hole can be made even and the edges smoothed off by rubbing on sandpaper on a flat surface.
Having tested the camera eyeball in situ for physical movement, it was clear that the camera housing was far too bulky and the cam needed removing from its casing. Amazingly a quick trawl of the web found a very detailed step by step description of how to do this.
Respect to Gary Honis, whose Astrophotography and Digital Imaging website had a whole article detailing all the tricky screws things needed to get the camera and drive board out of the shell
http://ghonis2.ho8.com/lifecam/lifecam1.html
This started simple, but ended up like the jumble on the right after about half an hour
Eventually the camera was extracted from the case and looked like this
The eyeball was given a cornea, made from an old torch lens, trimmed to size with a file and glued in...
Here is the camera in the ball. This is fascinating to pugs...
The last remaining thing was to add a means by which the eyeball could be moved. To do this a rod needed to be added.
The casing of the camera was operated on and with a bit of simple metalworking
>Until a beautiful eye was made, thus!
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