This Adorable Poké Ball Rocks, Lights Up, and Produces Sound Effects
Redditor GeneralHugo built a real life Poké Ball, complete with sound effects, lights, and even physical rocking.
There have been dozens of Pokémon games released over the years, but the video games in the core series all follow essentially the same formula. They’re all role-playing games in which you play as a Pokémon trainer whose job it is to go from city to city collecting cute little monsters along the way, and then force them to fight each other in both sanctioned and unsanctioned battles. Pokémonare caught in the wild by throwing Poké Balls, which are basically tiny little prisons from which there is no escape. Redditor GeneralHugo built a real life Poké Ball, complete with sound effects, lights, and even physical rocking.
In the Pokémon games, you aren’t guaranteed to imprison a Pokémon every time you throw a Poké Ball. Your chances of catching a Pokémon depend on their level, how weak they are at that moment, and the grade of Poké Ball you use. When you throw a Poké Ball, the Pokémon will immediately be trapped inside. You’ll then be presented with a little rocking animation in which the Poké Ball shakes back and forth as the Pokémon attempts to break free from their new cage. After a few seconds, it will either break out or it will become your new slave. It’s that animation that GeneralHugo’s project reproduced in the real world.
The enclosure is an official tin that contains cards for the Pokémon trading card game. There are a variety of styles available, but the one used in this project looks to be the standard Poké Ball. GeneralHugo put an Arduino Nano board inside of the Poké Ball tin with an LED-lit momentary switch in place of the tin’s original button. Pushing that button will cause the effects to start. A small SG90 servo motor with an attached weight causes the tin to rock back and forth while sound effects play through an MP3 decoder board and speaker. Power comes from an 1100mAh LiPo battery paired with a charging and protection board. All of the internal components are mounted to a 3D-printed frame. The result is fantastic, and very faithfully recreates the animations from the Pokémon video games.
