Comments on: Halloween props: Servo eyes

By: tim link

tim link — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:35:02 +0000

happy halloween , address and e mail and cell phone and phone from you ? , and from them ? , and what your e mail is from you ? , and from them ? ,

By: Tod E. Kurt

Tod E. Kurt — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:35:59 +0000

gryo-john, the full blog post contains all the information.
http://todbot.com/blog/2009/10/07/scary-shifty-servo-eyeballs/

And more directly, BlinkMs are “smart LEDs” that my company ThingM makes. You can learn about BlinkMs by going to http://blinkm.thingm.com/

By: googfan

googfan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:00:09 +0000

@gyro_john

BLINK-M’s are multicolor leds that can be programmed via a serial link.

By: gyro_john

gyro_john — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:14:13 +0000

@todbot:
The soundtrack in your video mentions that the eyeball lamps are Blinkems.

What are Blinkems? I Googled it and couldn’t find them.

By: Tod E. Kurt

Tod E. Kurt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:57:56 +0000

Thanks for posting this!

Regarding using a rack-and-pinion system for the eyeballs: it turns out creating a reliable rack-and-pinion system from scratch is kind of hard. If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this, please let me know.

Since I had a bunch of these little $3 servos, doing the “direct drive” thing, one-per-eyeball, was pretty cheap and gave me the capability of having the eyes go walleyed or crosseyed. Not that I show off that feature, as I wanted to demonstrate that having two servos move in synchrony was possible.

By: aztraph

aztraph — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:40:42 +0000

that’s a bit obvious goog, it was a little funny the first time, but i think that jokes been done to death.

By: googfan

googfan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:14:52 +0000

seriously. im gonna build that and put they eyes on a stack of money (that i saved with gieco)

By: Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:11:17 +0000

These eyes should be mounted in a creepy portrait.

By: Hackius

Hackius — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:49:36 +0000

As far as I know there’s no forum dedicated to hacking like we’re used to around here.

By: Hackius

Hackius — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:49:09 +0000

Could we get some sort of forum where we can talk?

It seems we all want to discuss how to improve hacks but all we have to work with is the comment system. It’s a strong knowledgeable community here at hackaday. A simple forum would do wonders and increase visits.

By: Bodeddie

Bodeddie — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:44:01 +0000

Nice effect, but why 3 servos? It would be trivially easy to but both eyes on a linkage moved by 1 servo. Of course that wouldn’t work if you wanted the eyes to move independantly, but the video looks like they are moving in sync. Still a creepy effect. Put a trigger of some kind on them so they look toward you when you trigger them and they become REALLY creepy! Seen this done as simply as a pressure mat or as sophisticated as Polaroid Sonar sensors to actully track the victim. The simple way is to trigger them with an IR door trigger or a pressure mat and to look at the area of the trigger, then have them just slowly turn to give the Illusion of tracking. It really does work and when designing Halloween props, if you can keep them simple but still effective, then your budget stretches a lot farther! Still a nice job.

By: googfan

googfan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:25:39 +0000

iT’S THE MONEY YOU COULD BE SAVING WITH GEICO

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:14:26 +0000

Nice :D