Maker: Brian Gershon, Jan 2014

We inherited an older version of a Disney Princess Activity Ride-On toy that was in good shape, but the electronics didn't work.

I tried to get things working, but wires were frail and battery wires were fried.

I decided to rip out the old electronics and wires, add an Arduino Pro Mini and a lot of solder and rewiring, and was able to repurpose its 6 buttons/switches/levers, 2 LEDs blinkers and speaker.

The Arduino Pro Mini was ideal because:

• It supports a generous power-saving mode, uses 3V (instead of 5V) and is small.

This Arduino code does three things:

• Support Arduino Mini Pro sleep mode to conserve battery. Powers down after about 30 seconds of no use.

• Toy's ignition switch powers it back up

• The main loop flashes the left/right blinkers slowly, then speeds up when a button pressed

• Keypress, power-up and power-down make different sound. Several buttons trigger more elaborate songs.

• Mario Bros Tunes

• Arduino Sleep

• Arduino Tone example

• I used two different sound implementations, these could be merged.

• I'd like to spend more time hunting down better sounds, maybe leveraging Play RTTTL Sounds with Arduino or even a more sophisticated sound system (SD card with sound files).

• A pressure sensor under the seat might be a fun addition, as well as adding more LEDs.