For those of you looking for a pet that doesn’t require much care, stays quiet at night, and won’t wreck the house, look no further! A group of students from the University of South Florida have come up with an Instructable to build your very own version of the beloved Piranha Plant from Nintendo’s Super Mario series.
The students used a 3D printer to fabricate the structure of the plant and added in an Arduino Uno, stepper motor, servo, and an ultrasonic sensor to really bring it to life.The sensor can detect ifsomeone walks near itand, once itsprey is in range,the plant will open up and shoot a “fireball”.Swapped in for actual fireballs are 6mm red airsoft BBs.The servo is used to control the opening of the Piranha’s mouth, and rubber bands snap it shut once it’s done attacking the unsuspecting victim.
Inside of the mouth is a firing mechanism that uses a stepper motor to yank back a piston tensioned with rubber bands. When the piston is as far back as it can go, it flies forward and shoots fireballs out of the plant’s mouth. Luckily they’ve included a safety feature in the design that disables the shooting mechanism. This allows you to reload the fireballs without the Piranha instantly shooting them back at you. They’ve included all of the .stl files and Arduino code, so all you have to do is print it, paint, and assemble. Once finished, just plug it into a USB port, and it’ll come to life!
