We’re not 100% sure the usefulness of this hack, but it is extremely interesting regardless and will probably make a lot of furries happy. WolfTronix presents their method for creating a realistic animatronic wolf tail. It uses an Atmel MCU controlling two servos alongside a mess of Klixx toys and paper clips to produce a nice wag motion. The guide is extremely detailed and looks to be fun, so long as you don’t mind the monotonous task of shaving off potentially hundreds of ‘nubs’ as they call them. Either way, you’ll definitely have the best (and only…) tail on the block.
Thanks [J. Peterson]
This man is going to make a lot of money if he produces these, I know furries who would pay any amount of money for one of these.
This guys been working on animatronic tails for 5 years at least, I remember viewing his earlier models, they did look cool, but the problem is even though they look cool, they can’t be petted ;)
Who the hell posts 20MB quicktime vids these days? Just upload to Youtube already.
Fekkin’ furries.
@nebulous
It streams pretty well for me. No need to download it all.
Firefox 3.5.2 with VLC’s browser plugin.
Makes me wonder how many furries there are on hackaday. It’s sorta fitting, I suppose. They do tend to be creative, drawing and making their own costumes and whatnot.
Furry here, reporting in. I didn’t realize this guy is still working on his project. I remember seeing this years ago, but figured it was impractical for my purposes. Its still pretty clever though!
“I remember seeing this years ago, but figured it was impractical for my porpoises.”
FTFY
And I can’t even spell my own name.
Tbh this looks like the thing that crawled inside of Neo’s stomach in the first Matrix movie. It’s kind of creepy.
This is cool, even tho I’m not a true furry, I might get one just because its cool.
Screw that, I’ll just build one.
btw wolf’s tail is like passive (he can’t move it), dog’s tail is active (they can move it)
@Epsilon Squadron
Stop confusing hackaday with 4chan please
I’d wear it on the front.
Halloween is sneaking up. Combine this with the werewolf costume on Instructables and you’ll win any costume contest!
http://www.instructables.com/id/realistic-werewolf-costume/
‘nother fur reporting in. I wanted to try this with that thermally reactive “muscle wire” at one point, would be quieter and more natural, not sure how strong it’d be though. I’d only do it for a large fox’s tail so it would have to be pretty sturdy anyways. Awesome work though!
Another fekk’n furry here – I’ve met this gentleman and seen his stuff first hand (paw?). His earlier stuff was made out of paperclips, and it doesn’t seem to have changed. Now I’ve not made a tail before (I’ve made animatronic ears), but I’m not very impressed with the quality of his fabrication. What /was/ impressive were the experiments with EMG and muscle control – I’d like to see more of that work.
Oh so many possibilities to adapt this… When I first saw the picture I was thinking Defiler from StarCraft.
And another fur here. It’s nice to see this side of the fandom on the net for a change, there really are a bunch of very talented animatronics geeks out there. Someone from Germany for example built a suit head with servo-controlled ears that he controls with bending sensors in his left glove/paw. Here’s a (German) Wiki page with some nice illustrations: http://www.fursuit.de/cms/index.php/Animatronik
Yet another fur here. The design is for sure impressive, but durability is the main issue. You don’t a tail that’ll break like a twig.
Another fur reporting in! Hackaday rules!
<:3~ keep up the work! you can do it! I've been working on animatronic dog ears for years now. its like just when i get close i lose it! lol. i get too excited! XD Furrie for life!!!
That’s a silly design. A furry, as usual, overengineering something to make it try and perfectly impersonate the design of nature’s solution, with all it’s flaws, and without the materials nature uses, ending up with something much worse. Heavy, fragile, requiring large noisy servos to run, with a loose unnatural look to it, and so needlessly complex as to cost a thousand dollars or more to buy!
You can make a better quality tail/tentacle spine with some silicone hose, and some parachute cord, which is durable, natural in appearance, ultra light weight, much easier to construct, and due to that substantially lighter weight, uses smaller, less noisy servos. The parts cost you all of fifteen bucks and (without any specialised tools) a few hours of your time.
Instructable forthcoming.
In response to muscle wire comments: That material works on the premise of heating metal through conductance, so unless you plan to keep your butt plugged in to a power socket, prepare to be disappointed with the extremely short battery life. If using a sensible structure, it doesn’t matter how close or far away from the ‘tail’ the servo is located, so you can really do anything you like to try and dampen the sound it’s gearset makes.
@Jenna Fox
Can’t wait to see your project, and the fact that it would improve on a preexisting approach we’ve featured! Send HAD a tip or comment with a link when you’re done.
Jakob Griffith
HAD Team
nother fur here :3
I’d make one myself, but, thaz kinda hard when yer in Bible college X3
yet another furry =D , btw grate job i am trying to teach myself the basics of electronics atm and still improving and hope to be able to do stuff like this for my fur suit
Another furry here. There seem to be a lot of us on HAD! This is rather awesome, and I would like to make one at some point.
You should sell the spines and the actual tail people would order them you make them and you would get so much money dude you would be rich because of these tails man if pay anything for one T~T sell them please
They do sell them: http://www.wolftronix.com/commissions.htm $700
I wanna buy something like that for MGRR Bladewolf