Reader [Josh McCormick] hacked this awesomely drunk animatronic Santa. Here’s a cached video link. He purchased the 5 foot tall singing and dancing Santa Claus at Walmart for $50 with the intention of modifying it for an art show. Once he got it home he began tearing it down. He found the brains of the device in the left foot (just like Santa!). The motion control is all analog and there is a hidden potentiometer that controls the dancing rate (jigginess). Josh used a BS2P40 Parallax BASIC Stamp for the digital control of the device and the sound samples were stored on a Quadravox QV306M4. To get the movements in sync, Josh recorded the performance as the sound clip was being played back. The movements were stored on a 24LC515 EEPROM. With some last minute work he got it to the show on time, but it unfortunately broke during exhibition and he did not win. There should be some consolation in the fact that it is on the internet now and will be seen by thousands of people instead of a handful.

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While some railgun projects are attempting to be the biggest and baddest, this one just wants to be functional. It’s not efficient or powerful, but it is really easy to put together. The barrel is constructed from two 3″ long pieces of aluminum weld bar with heavy duty Lucite sandwiched in between. The gap is only 1/16″. A disposable camera charging circuit plus 4 capacitors salvaged from other cameras provide the power supply. The projectile is a tiny piece of aluminum foil. It may not be the greatest gun ever made, but it looks like it would definitely be a good demo unit. Here is a coral cache of the site.

[thanks luke]

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