A useless box is basically a machine which turns itself off. However, with a few additional servos, and a little programming.

Control the door and "hand" separately. I utilized the MotorShield is clearly overkill for this project it reduces the complexity of the required electronics knowledge (and soldering) quite a bit.

Electronics - Parts List

The following parts were used:

Amount Part Type Properties

• 1 Arduino Uno.
• 1 MotorShield Rev3.
• 1 High-torque Servo for the arm.
• 1 Micro Servo.
• 1 Metallic Toggle Switch.
• 1 Power Supply.
• 2 Leds.

Wooden box with enough space to fit everything into. Some chipboard ~ 4mm to build the arm and mountings Cables.

• Solder.
• Screwdriver.
• Glue.

My useless box fulfills of course the basic functionality of turning itself off. But using a few additional pieces of equipment it can.

The box has basically a fixed set of "moves" it can do to turn of the switch after it has been turned on. To make things a little more interesting, the moves are randomly used to surprise the operator. The whole code is quite easy - there's nothing special about it. I've created a few bases classes to control every peripheral and another class "Moves" to implement the patterns. This is mainly because the basic Arduino way of programming leads to lots of code duplication and unreadable code.