It knows if you have been Naughty or Nice!

The Naughty or Nice machine is simply a bit of fun for the holidays. The machine works by taking a photo of the hand placed on the bottom plate. Using the openCV python computer vision library to count the number of red colour pixels, and display the result on the LCD screen. A little showmanship is used to entrain people while they are waiting for the results of the test. I created the “Naughty or Nice” machine for Christmas 2013, first of all I thought about hacking our Christmas tree, but everyone hacks their Christmas tree, then I had the idea for a “Naughty or Nice” meter, checked online and found that Ben Heck had beat me too that idea, sometime later I had the idea about making the meter interactive, and the idea for the “Naughty or Nice” machine was born.

The “Naughty or Nice” machine is built around the Raspberry Pi camera module, a Raspberry Pi model A, Adafrut USB/serial LCD screen and an Arduino driving RGB LEDs, Adafruit Neopixels. The project is cased in a frame made with Makerbeam and laser cut Perspex panels.