instructables

Penny's Computer Book (from Inspector Gadget)

by bekathwia

Today I’m sharing a special Arduino project– it’s a replica of Penny’s computer book from Inspector Gadget. I carved out a
real book to ll it with electronics that look and behave like the book in the cartoon. It’s powered by an Arduino Nano
ESP32.
Supplies:

To shop for the parts I needed, I used Digi-Key’s extensive catalog lters. Here's a list of all the parts:
Arduino Nano ESP32
Arduino MEGA2560
USB cable (C-type and B-type)
Solderful breadboard
2.4” TFT display
Grey buttons x12
Green illuminated buttons x12
White button illuminated red
Square buttons in red, blue, and yellow
Audio FX board
Speaker
LCD display with I2C backpack
4x4 matrix keypad
NeoPixel stick
Perfboard
Solderful breadboard
USB battery pack or lipoly battery and 5V boost converter
30g stranded wire
Thick book
Blue paint mixed with matte medium
Black paper
Book stand

Tools:
Soldering tools and supplies
Multimeter
Utility knife
Rulers
Cutting mat
Penny's Computer Book (from Inspector Gadget): Page 1
 Paintbrush
Spring clamps

Step 1: Watch the Video

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Watch the build and see the book in action in the above video!

https://youtu.be/JM45EVcGCyo

Step 2: Research

The rst step to any good prop replica is thorough research. Check out my Pinterest board for this project . I gathered up
a bunch of visuals of Penny’s book to inform my bill of materials. It’s a relatively thick book with a blue cover, and it’s got a
small screen and button matrix on the cover, though you never actually see Penny using this feature in the show.
On the inside left, there’s a 3x4 button panel, a portrait-oriented screen, twelve illuminated green buttons, a white button
that lights up red, and three small square buttons, one each red, yellow, and blue. On the inside right, there’s a large
screen, which I plan to emulate stylistically rather than literally.

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Step 3: Making the Body of the Book

For the main body of the book, I looked into blank books but couldn’t nd any thick enough to look right or hold all the
components. So I gured the least terrible printed hard-cover book to destroy would be a collection of stories that are
not at all scarce.
I cut the cover to make way for a character LCD and matrix button panel. I sandwiched my small cutting mat in the book
to prevent cutting further than the cover layer.
Inside, I laid out the parts for the left panel, and arranged the button sets onto some small perfboards. The mockup was
looking good, so I could go ahead and solder the buttons in place.
Once I had the holes in the cover made, and veri ed the components t, I got to painting the book blue. I used a mixture
of blue acrylic paint and acrylic matte medium, and I covered the interior pages of the book with painter’s tape so I could
easily handle the whole thing, paint the front, back, and spine, and set it up to dry overnight.
Then I tested out my button panel by wiring it up to an Arduino Uno running a simple program to toggle the LED on and
o when the button is pressed.

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Step 4: Making the Inside of the Book

The next step is where things start to get messy– cutting out the interior body of the book. I used a ruler and utility knife
to make progressively deeper cuts through the pages, and used some clamps to help hold the pages in place. I also cut a
passageway through the bound edge, so I could run wires between the two sides of the open book.
I wired up the rest of the green button panel and fed its stranded wires through the hole I had cut through the spine.
Each button is wired up like the big white one shown here– all grounds are connected to one wire, and then another two
wires go to the switch and the LED.
Next it was time to install the other tested components into the book. I soldered stranded wires to a TFT display and
threaded them to the right side of the book.
I connected the grey button panel to an audio fx board loaded with sounds from the show, and installed the speaker in
the right side of the book. Then I used little pieces of cardboard and my hot glue gun to secure the components in place.
I gave up on the idea that the book will fold shut again, so I glued the pages to each other in the ipped open position. I
used rulers and clamps to hold the pages together while the glue dried.
I’m using the Arduino Nano ESP32 as the microcontroller brain of this project. It’s got wi and bluetooth crammed into a
tiny footprint, supports both Arduino and MicroPython, and it’s compatible with the Arduino IoT Cloud. I like that it has
castellated pins so I can solder it directly to a breadboard and keep my circuit pro le as low as possible.

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Step 5: Finishing the Uncut Pages

Before I could embed any more components into the right side, I needed to sort out the remaining uncut pages. Using a
separate paper template cut to match the interface, I cut a few pages to serve as the compartment’s solid cover.
Then I cut a piece of black paper to match the openings on the left, and one big opening on the right. Since some of the
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printed pages and component perfboard was visible, I used smaller pieces of black paper to shore up the layer behind
the black paper. I used that rectangle to guide cuts through the remaining right side pages to create one large cavity
where the microcontroller can live.

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Step 6: Adding the Electronics

I've shared the circuit diagram for the electronics in the book above.

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I have the ESP32 board driving the display and fun wi features of this project, but it simply doesn’t have enough i/o pins
to deal with all the buttons and LEDs wired up on the left side, so I employed an Arduino MEGA dedicated just to the
illuminated buttons. They share power and ground.
The MEGA also drives the pixel animation on a NeoPixel stick, which I’m using to simulate a screen animation from the
book in the show. I took a tip from Nerdforge and layered printed transparency and paper to create a graphic with more
dimension.
Attached are the two Arduino sketches I made for this project.

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 Download
https://www.instructables.com/FNK/QIUL/LNUC42PI/FNKQIULLNUC42PI.ino

Download
https://www.instructables.com/FEK/LR1J/LNUC42PJ/FEKLR1JLNUC42PJ.ino

Step 7: More About the Wifi

The program generates a network you can join called Penny’s Computer Book, which launches a captive portal after you
join it. The page you’re shown has buttons that control some di erent outputs on the TFT display including the MAD
graphic, calling Brain the dog, and showing you the components used to build the book.

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Step 8:

Show o your book!

Well done! It seems to me that you've put a lot of effort to this project, and it paid off.
Thank you for sharing this project.
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Good luck at Maker Faire.
And by the way, I think it would be cool if you could also watch a couple of Inspector Gadget
episodes on this device. I bet kids and fans of the show would love it.

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