[Tony's] trying to scare the kids again this Halloween. This year’s creation is a skeleton that springs up from a coffin. His creepy coffin is built from plywood and in the classic style it gets narrower at each end. Inside, there’s a full-sized rubber skeleton affixed to a 2×4. Pneumatic rams are used to lift the lid and spring forth the skeleton from the dead.
He’s planned his performance well. The finished system uses a fog machine and looped audio for ambiance. A motion sensor detects innocent victims approaching, kills the music, opens the coffin lid, and adjusts the lighting. The coffin is right next to the door so when the doorbell is pushed and the skeleton springs upright this should scare the bejesus out of you. See how effective this in the video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
[Backroads] has put together this nicely detailed writeup explaining how to make a low cost popup prop. He’s using a single pneumatic valve and a home made PVC piston to raise and lower a scary mask. He’s using an off-the-shelf 110v AC valve controller to control the valve. A flickering light, a “screamer” and a fog machine help fill out the project. The result is quite nice. We would be tempted to put a pressure sensor in front of it to optimize the scare timing.
[casafear1] has put out this video detailing how to build the “ground-breaker”, a zombie escaping from the grave. It is a simple frame for the arms and shoulders, with a couple pneumatic pistons to make it jerk as though it were pulling itself from the grave. He goes into a decent amount of detail explaining the physical construction, offering several tips to prolong the life of this prop. Unfortunately, he doesn’t enlighten us as to his control scheme. Is it manually controlled? Is it automated? Does it get activated by passers by or is it always going?
Last year, we posted most of the Halloween projects after Halloween. This year we would like to try to get you those ideas and inspiration far enough ahead of time to help you put them to use. Send us your favorite Halloween projects so we can get them published.
For four years, this guy has been using this Pneumatic bed alarm clock to wake up. Apparently “I’m a really heavy sleeper” is an understatement. It is computer controlled and runs from two seperate air sources. He entered it in a radio show contest and we’re guessing he won. You can see the test run at the radio station after the break. We really can understand the fun of building this. But actually using it for four years, without suffering any major injuries, is an accomplishment of it’s own.
We first talked about air muscles in 2005 while lusting after Shadow Robotic’s dexterous hand. The pneumatic devices are known for being lightweight and compliant. They’re designed to be used in robot arms and legs. [jelengar] stumbled across this guide to building your own air muscles. We’re not exactly sure what the original source is since it reads like a machine translation. The core is a piece of silicone tubing used in aquariums. It’s sealed at one end with a bolt. Braided electrical sheathing is slid over the tube and secured using multiple wraps of 24gauge wire. They say to test it using 20psi, but there’s no mention of what the limits are.
Here’s yet another robot hoping to dominate the human race through the power of ROCK. Cythbot was built to demonstrate Cyth Systems machine vision systems. The device uses a camera to watch the Guitar Hero monitor and identify notes for button presses. The strum bar is then triggered after a delay. The notes are identified solely by pixel intensity since star power can cause them to change shape and color. All button presses are done using pneumatics. The whole system is self-contained and doesn’t require a separate computer for processing. Our favorite part is that the controller remains completely unmodified and the industrial light tree used to indicate notes. The team says that the pneumatics aren’t quite fast enough to hit 100%, unlike some humans. Video of the bot in action after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
