Cricket and sensor title (12k)
Gumball Graphing Machine
Mouse in cage (10k)


Here's how it works:

One (7k) The hamster runs on its wheel
  (the cricket on the cage sends
   a signal to the crawler)

Two (7k) The crawler starts running
   (traveling between two
    touch switches, releasing
    a gumball that travels
    down the ramps)

Three (7k) A gumball lands in a tube
   (the row of 24 tubes get pushed     forward every hour by the truck     that reads black and white lines     on the track below it)


The idea to build this
came from Ben's 1st grade class. They had a new hamster in class named Elvis, and wondered if Elvis ever used his wheel. We decided to build a marble machine that would give a visual graph of the hamster's activity.

The whole machine (18k)

Top of the machine (14k)
Crawler that travels between
2 touch switches
Bottom of the machine (14k)
View of the gumball histograph
and the black and white track



  Logo for this project
Lightbulb (10k)

                                

Materials:
3 red dot crickets
2 touch switches
1 magnetic switch
1 reflectance sensor

Project ideas
What's a Cricket?
Technical info
BBB overview
MIT Media Lab / Epistemology & Learning Group 
©1998 MIT Media Lab