Christmas Box That Opens With a Button

This project was created and intended for Boston College’s Campus School. The Campus School is a publicly funded, private, special education day school located on the Boston College campus. It educates students that face complex challenges and have unique learning needs.

The Campus School is hosting a Christmas fair and they want all the students to be able to actively participate. The box we created will allow a student to control when it opens, which will prompt a message on the speaker and led lights.

• ⅛” birch plywood
• cardboard
• laser cutter
• boxes.py on festi.info
• rubber mallet
• popsicle sticks
• hot glue gun and hot glue
• black paint
• paint brush
• black felt
• red velvet ribbon
• fabric scissors
• duct tape
• 3D Printer
• servo motor
• speaker
• batterpack
• adafruit circuit playground board

Figure out what size you intend to make and adjust the dimensions accordingly. Also, plan for any additional holes needed for your build. Using boxes.py on festi.info we were able to use the "ABox" template. We made modifications to fit the needs of our project. Following that, we imported the design into adobe to prepare it to be cut.

Using a Trotec laser cutter, we cut out the pieces of our box according to our dimensions. All of the pieces were cut out of ⅛” birch plywood; however, the top was cut out of cardboard. We made this decision so that the motors could easily lift open the lid's weight.

Carefully connect the pieces of the box together. We used a mallet to make sure everything fit tight.  Use hot glue around the corners for further strength.

Paint even coats of black paint on the box and popsicle sticks until they are opaque. We intentionally chose to use the colors black and red because many of the students have visual impairments. These colors are easily differentiated from one another.

Cut the felt into pieces of size using fabric scissors. Next, carefully hot glue the pieces securely to the box. When choosing our material, the decision to use felt was intentional. Felt is a good sensory material that we thought the students would appreciate.

We wrapped the ribbon on the top of the box so that it looks like a Christmas present. Continuing the pattern, we then used hot glue to attach little strips to the side.

Take the painted popsicle sticks and stack them together to create a lever long and sturdy enough for your box. We ended up only needing one lever but it can be helpful to have a backup. We used duct tape to secure everything.

Attach the lever to the servo motor and then hot glue the servo motor to the side of the box. Also, connect the speaker and a button. We 3D printed our button and then soldered it to a cable wire.

We coded in Mu using Circuit Python. Attached to this step is our code.

Decorate the box to your liking! We added a battery-pack strip of snowflake LEDs lights and a CVI Christmas tree made out of tissue paper and vinyl. 

This box is for multipurpose use. The Campus School plans to have a student control it so that they can give out candy to visitors at their Christmas Fair.