A Robot That Shoots Videos in Tik-Tok

Introduction

The idea of creating something capable of generating content without the intervention of a human hand has been spinning in my head for a long time. Something controlled by an established system that would exclude the human factor. And now the day has come when I am implementing this idea.

To start working on creating this marvelous device, I had to decide on the platform on which it would generate its content. The platform had to meet these characteristics:

• Simple and intuitive interface that even a child could understand

• Ability to create and edit short videos inside the platform itself

• Simple promotion of content to a large audience

- And of course, as you have long understood, this is a wonderful TikTok application that meets all the previously listed parameters.

In addition, TikTok gives another huge advantage and this is the INANITION OF THE PRODUCED, which greatly simplifies the work of our device.

00:00 - Introduction

01:00 - Assembling the robot

02:37 - Writing Software

03:23 - The robot uploads the first video to Tik-Tok

04:32 - The robot adds music to its video

05:10 - How many videos did the robot get on Tik-Tok?

05:28 - Conclusion

After I decided on the platform, I started working on the mechanical part of the robot. I spent several hours on the Internet in order to find the most suitable design for the implementation of the tasks that I would pose for the robot in the future. I was looking for some kind of plotter that would be able to move along the coordinates given to it in the plane. Since I was relying on the materials to which I had access at the moment, my search circle narrowed significantly. My choice fell on the project of a certain joo, namely his plotclock. A system of three servos is capable of moving a point in the coordinate plane. The project itself was intended for printing on a 3D printer, but the author also left drawings for cutting this acrylic structure.

I don’t have a 3D printer and have no desire to cut something out of acrylic. Therefore, I removed all unnecessary details of this design and, taking into account all sizes, created similar ones from aluminum corners and a profile. After connecting all the parts together and installing the servos in the right places, I fixed everything on the stand and proceeded to connect all the electronics.

The Arduino Nano board will act as the brain of our robot. I connected everything according to the diagram below.

Another robot must be able to interact with the smartphone screen. To do this, I used a stylus tip, which I fixed with glue and a nut to the end of the so-called hand of our robot, and I also grounded this end for correct work with the touchscreen. I fixed the smartphone myself on the stand using a corner and a special mount

The circuit consists of three servos, an Arduino Nano and one capacitor per 1000 microfarads

And so the test bench for the robot is ready, it remains to infuse "soul" into it. And this means that we are moving on to the next part of creating our wondrous device - writing software. I'm not particularly close to programming, so in order to ease my lot, I used the Servostudio program(unfortunately, the program has only a Russian interface), which allows you to control servos directly from your computer and create a sequence of their movements. So, step by step, I practiced every movement of the servos so that in the end they performed the chain of actions I needed. Thus, I managed to get the robot to post its first video in tik tok on its own. By developing a chain of actions, I was able to achieve that the robot could make some movements to the camera and even add music to the video and this is not the limit of its capabilities, but for now this is enough for me.

You can see all these actions in the video (03:23 - The robot uploads the first video to Tik-Tok

04:32 - The robot adds music to its video)

On Google Drive, I have uploaded a schematic and a sketch for Arduino, which allows the robot to publish one video to Tik-Tok. In addition, I uploaded the last ServoStudio save there, in which there are several scenarios of the robot's behavior that I worked out.

Well, the videos are posted on the Internet in the public domain for a huge audience of the wonderful TikTok platform. And now I would like to summarize and see how many vidos of the robot have scored.

The robot uploaded 4 videos to Tik-Tok. Of these, 3 scored around 400 views and one 50. In total, about 1250 views, and this is all in one day, then the video stopped being promoted by the platform and the growth of views ended.

By the way, who wants to admire the work of the robot, here is his nickname in Tik-Tok:

@tiktokbot_niklax

Of course, many programmers and engineers will tell me that I did everything wrong and it could have been much better and easier, but I got what I wanted. I made a Tiktoker robot, which is able to create and upload a video to the network without human assistance. I would like to develop this project, than most likely I will do it in the near future.