Creepy Halloween Doll Might Make You Betsy Wetsy

October 22, 2019 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

If you want to terrify your neighborhood this Halloween, you might go for the old standbys like skeletons or zombies. But you don’t have to go gory to find glory. Consider the talking doll. Those things are creepy enough already, right? Well, [cabuu] says no, the doll should be animated with servos and have remote control. She should still be able to talk, just not when you expect her to.

Forget pushing on her stomach, ’cause Baby’s got a Wemos D1 mini and her own Blynk app now. A set of sliders in the app control a micro servo that animates her eyes, and another servo that twists her head from side to side. Her head doesn’t go all the way ’round, but that’s probably for the best. There are preset fright modes [cabuu] can set and forget until she springs to life via motion sensor.

We particularly like the bracket [cabuu] designed and printed that joins the eyeballs with the servo, along with his clever use of printed mate brackets to hold the servos in place within the head. If you think you can stomach it, there’s a demo video after the break. Stay tuned for total doll dissection after that as [cabuu] builds and inserts the terrifying tidbits.

We love hacks that combine innocence with insanity. Have you ever seen Thomas the Tank Engine singing Rick Astley?

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Rita’s Dolls Probably Live Better Than You Do

September 6, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 3 Comments

If it wasn’t for the weird Dutch-Norwegian techno you’d presumably have to listen to forever, [Gianni B.]’s doll house for his daughter, [Rita] makes living in a Barbie World seem like a worthwhile endeavor. True to modern form, it’s got LED lighting. It’s got IoT. It’s got an app and an elevator. It even has a tiny, working, miniature television.

It all started with a Christmas wish. [Rita] could no longer stand to bear the thought of her Barbie dolls living a homeless lifestyle on her floor, begging passing toys for enough monopoly money to buy a sock to sleep under. However, when [Gianni] visited the usual suspects to purchase a dollhouse he found them disappointing and expensive.

So, going with the traditional collaborating-with-Santa ruse, he and his family had the pleasure of collaborating on a dollhouse development project. Each room is lit by four ultra bright LEDs. There is an elevator that’s controlled by an H-bridge module, modified to have electronic braking. [Rita] doesn’t own a Dr. Barbie yet, so safety is paramount.

The brain of the home automation is a PIC micro with a Bluetooth module. He wrote some code for it, available here. He also went an extra step and used MIT’s scratch to make an app interface for the dollhouse. You can see it work in the video after the break. The last little hack was the TV. An old arduino, an SD Card shield, and a tiny 2.4 inch TFT combine to make what’s essentially a tiny digital picture frame.

His daughter’s are overjoyed with the elevation of their doll’s economic class and a proud father even got to show it off at a Maker Faire. Very nice!

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Building A Creepy Doll Army

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Want your very own Chucky doll to scare the crap out of the roommates? [Gzip] shows you how to make this happen by adding servo-based animatronics to old dolls. In the video after the break you can see the doll throw up her arms and turn her head thanks to a motor in each shoulder and one in her melon. You won’t see it in the clip, but the legs are motorized too meaning that some creative coding might have this old gal awkwardly crawling across the room (with knife in hand). Then again, maybe this is just the inspiration you need to get off your bum and finish the Santa-Pede Challenge. Submissions are due a week from today!

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