Got a Battle-Ready Pikachu a while ago, opened it up many times and was fascinated by the internal design. There might be budget reason involved because the trigger that sends the foam disc into the shooting mechanism was not motorized. The player has to pull Pikachu’s left ear which connects to a leveler that pushes the foam disc out. The desire to mod it had grown stronger in my head, finally found time for it. First thing first, replace the ear trigger with a servo. I 3D printed a servo mount and connected the servo handle to the leveler. It worked out nicely.
Next, use a motor shield to take over the motor for shooting mechanism as well.
I adopted this tutorial on Adafruit.com and switched the tech base to feather LE Bluetooth. I was looking for a LE platform that is easy to work with. By that I meant less low-level coding for the sake of rapid prototyping. Everything worked out in 1 try, can’t ask more than this.
I am now playing with Adafruit’s controller app and trying to make an app myself so I can incorporating voice control in the future. Who doesn’t want to make “Pikachu, I choose you!” and “Pikachu, attack!” a reality! I might also switch the tech base to Raspberry Pi, since I already have a working voice controlled platform built up on it.