Halloween hangover: talking heads

posted Jan 10th 2011 3:00pm by
filed under: home hacks

Here’s a Halloween prop leftover; [Chris] built his own version of singing heads from Disney’s Haunted Mansion on his porch for last year’s ghoulish decor. A projected image of actors singing a spooky song gives each of the four Styrofoam mannequin noggins its own digital life. There’s an optical sensor on the porch stairs that is tripped by unsuspecting candy-seekers. An Arduino monitors the sensor and uses AutoHotkey to start the video clip on a netbook. Check out the video after the break to see the finished display do its thing after dark.



17 Responses to Halloween hangover: talking heads

  • Thopter says:

    Nice setup. A little out of sync though

  • silivrenion says:

    That’s pretty nifty!

  • paul says:

    nice simple code too. and check out some of the other projects on his site. I had no idea you had to season cast iron skillets!

  • bbsux says:

    What about the main rooms and ballroom in the haunted mansion? Don’t they use some kind of projected image onto a clear woven fabric or something? Now THAT would be COOL!!!

  • Bill Porter says:

    I have a feeling this is one of those things that looks/sounds 1000x better then what can be captured on camera.

  • @bbsux That illusion is called “Pepper’s Ghost” and it actually quite old. It’s really not too hard to pull off but it helps if the viewer is in a stationary location. You can see a better explanation on Wikipedia.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

  • @Bill Porter I have a video uploaded here
    http://www.thenewhobbyist.com/2010/09/first-3d-head-projection-test/

    that gives a better idea how it looks but yeah, you’re right the 3D effect you get is hard to capture on camera. It doesn’t help that after a run through iMovie and YouTube the audio is out of sync too…

  • bluewraith says:

    That’s awesome. I’d love to see what its like in real life.

  • Mike says:

    pretty creepy looking :)

  • robomonkey says:

    very cool. One of my favorite parts of the ride too.

  • xoxplox says:

    WIR SIND DIE ROBOTER

  • hammy says:

    Now all that is left is to do a recreation of “Mr Sandman” from the movie “Eight heads in a duffel bag”

  • Bill says:

    @TheNewHobbyist

    better, thanks for the link. Great work btw.

  • jukus says:

    I would trick or treat at that house, ask for a micro-controller kit instead

  • That is absolutely genius, it is like Disneyland on your porch. How much does something like that costs? Would love to implement some singing heads at my house next Halloween.

  • @Robert Costume it was pretty low cost since I had/found most of the parts needed. If I had to total everything…

    Arduino UNO $30
    4x Styrofoam foam heads $40 (approx on ebay)
    Motion sensing switch $10-$15

    The rest I imagine you could scrape together:
    Laptop for video playback
    Projector
    Speakers or karaoke machine

    So I guess somewhere around $80 if you had to buy everything new.

    If you have any other questions I’d be happy to answer them. Shoot me an email at chris [at] thenewhobbyist.com

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