DIY: Sprinkler Robot Sculpture

On a Saturday morning while in the garage organizing, we found some of the sprinklers that had been used on the home and which I replaced to run a Drip Watering System instead. They where not much by themselves but gave me an idea which had been working itself on my head for a while. I knew what I wanted it to look like and after talking to my son about it, We decided that it should stand on our front yard and that the eyes and chest should light up (Like Iron Man).

I used plastic piping for the fingers, some of the skinnier sprinklers for the arms and the thicker sprinklers for the legs. To screw everything together I used a drill bit to make a preliminary hole to make it easier to screw the pieces together easier. All together it took about 6 to 8 hours to assemble which some of that time used up by trial and error on part placement.

For the electronic part of the project I decided to use a Solar Light that I got from the local 99¢ Only Stores and which I hacked into to remove the LED and be able to run 4 LEDs from it. I placed all 4 LEDs in parallel and gave them plenty of wire to be able to run them from the Chest all the way to the Head for the eyes. I also attached a second battery holder in parallel to provide the system extra power.

My boy really enjoyed working on the project as well as working on the routing of the wiring which he called “Open Chest Surgery”. As you can see from the picture, the bot stands at about 4 foot.

Enjoy!