Show HN: Robot that lets me use the force like a Jedi [video]

I’m a massive Star Wars fan and wanted to be able to use the force. There’s one scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi waves his hand and closes a door. It’s so simple and that’s what I think most people would use the force for, simple tasks.

The video explains a lot but here are some highlights:

- A camera + raspberry pi are used for the gesture recognition so it can recognize my hand movements.

- To open the door, I used some metal wire, a pulley, and a motor. There’s a thousand ways to open a door, but how would you have done it? I also considered a linear actuator.

- I had trouble increasing the speed of the motor to open the door so instead, I made the total length of the metal wire shorter. Assuming the wind up speed of the motor is constant, reducing the length of the wire by 80% should make it 5x faster.

Any questions? Let me know.