Penny's Inspector Gadget Watch Becomes Reality

To pay tribute to the heroine of Inspector Gadget, Becky Stern recreated Penny's iconic watch using an Arduino Nicla Voice and Edge Impulse.

The joke at the heart of the Inspector Gadget cartoon was that the eponymous police inspector was a bumbling doofus. He had access to a plethora of useful tools — many of which were built into his own cyborg body — but was ineffectual. It was Gadget's niece, Penny, and her dog, Brain, who actually managed to save the day, week after week. To pay tribute to that heroine of Saturday morning cartoons, Becky Stern recreated Penny's iconic watch.

Penny wore something akin to a smartwatch in the show, decades before that term entered into the world's vocabulary. Like most of the devices in Inspector Gadget, its functions were mysterious and often entirely plot-specific. But we do know that Penny was able to contact Brain via the watch, using some sort of voice-activated video calling application similar to FaceTime. That is what Stern replicated here. The real watch obviously can't make actual video calls to a fictional cartoon dog, but Stern was able to achieve a convincing enough effect.

Because Stern wanted voice activation, she chose to utilized an Arduino Nicla Voice development board. Arduino's engineers designed that board specifically for machine learning-based voice applicationslike this one. Stern used Edge Impulse to train a machine learning model to recognize the "come in, Brain" wake command that we hear in the cartoon. Stern's training included her own voice and an audio clip of Penny speaking the command, so either will work.

The Arduino board fits into a 3D-printed watch enclosure, complete with a clever 3D-printed band that uses lengths of filament to hold the links together. Power comes from a small LiPo battery and an Adafruit 1.69" IPS TFT LCD screen acts as the watch face. When the Arduino hears "come in, Brain," it shows a new picture of the helpful pup on the display.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist. Check out my YouTube channel: Serial Hobbyism
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