Halloween Hacks: Simple Robotic Skull Is A Perfect Last Minute Decoration

October 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 3 Comments

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simple_talking_skull

If you haven’t taken the time to put your decorations together it’s time to get a move on. With Halloween just around the corner big elaborate displays are pretty much out of the question, but [Boris] and the team over at Open Electronics have a simple project that’s sure to be a hit with the Trick or Treaters.

Using a cheap plastic prop that you can likely find at any Halloween store, they have put together a simple talking skull that moves along with whatever music or sound is being piped through it. The skull’s mouth is moved by a single servo mounted inside the brain cavity, which is controlled by an Arduino. The Arduino monitors the sound level of the source audio being played, actuating the servo accordingly.

It’s quick, simple, and effective – perfect for a last minute decorating project. If you are a little more ambitious, you could always put together a whole chorus of skulls without too much additional effort – just a few extra skulls and some servos would do the trick nicely.

Check out a quick video of the skull in action below, along with another short clip showing how the servo is rigged up to move its mouth.

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Animatronics In A Box

October 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

[Knife141] built an impressive animatronic head. He uses it mostly for volunteer activities, like getting school children excited about technology. He built a carrying trunk that fits the puppet just right, making it easy to store and to transport.

He started by making the parts for the head out of cardboard to make sure they would fit together and operate properly. These were then used as templates to cut the pieces out of half-inch plywood. A series of servos, connected either directly or with linking rods, move the mouth, eyes, eyelids, eyebrows and neck via a servo controller board.

Sound is played by a single-board computer called a RAPU via a pair of computer speakers. This board is also what sends commands to the servo controller. When [Knife141] wants to create a new act for the animatronics, he starts by writing the dialog and having a text-to-speech program turn it into an MP3. He then goes through the tedious process of choreographing the puppet to the dialog, a process that generally takes him an hour for each minute of run-time. It’s worth it though, see for yourself by watching one of his acts in the video after the break.

Looking for something a little bit more your speed? Check out this animatronic head which you can build in no time.

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Robotic Arm Follows The Movements Of Your Own Limbs

October 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

[Alejandro] and his friends recently finished a first prototype of scratch-built robotic arm. They’ve got some nice electronics bench equipment for use with a project like this, but for the actual fabrication work it’s off to the kitchen.

As you can see in the video after the break, they’re using PVC as the stock material in this build. Flat sheets are produced by slitting a PVC pipe down the middle, warming it in oven until soft, then compressing it between two floor tiles with a big jug of water used as a weight for the makeshift press. Mounting holes for the servo motors that make up the joints are drilled with a hand drill, and the assembly was affixed to an old CD as a base.

Once assembled they wired it to the control circuitry and build a set of sensors that you wear on your arm. Now your elbow, wrist, and pointer finger are in control of the servos. A demonstration of this functionality starts around two minutes into the video.

We’ve seen other examples of robot arms built without the use of machine tools. This arm made out of ShapeLock plastic is one of the most interesting examples.

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ATtiny Hacks: ATtiny45/85 Servo Library

September 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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Servo8bit is a library for AVR microcontrollers that allows you to drive servo motors without the need for a 16-bit timer. Obviously, this is quite useful for smaller chips that only have 8-bit timers and it is specifically targeted at the ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 microcontrollers. The library offers 256 steps of resolution, and can drive up to five servos at one time. Servo control pulses can be generated between 512 and 2560 microseconds and if you don’t mind increasing the time between these pulses [Liya] says it would be possible to increase the 5-servo limit.

The library is quite easy to use, but in its current state it would take just a bit of work to port to another device. It’s been written for an 8 Mhz clock signal with PortB used to drive the motors. Using find-and-replace to change the PORTB keywords to use a DEFINE variable should be easy enough, but we don’t know how hard it would be to change the clock frequency.

We wonder if it’s possible to make this a slave device, perhaps implementing a 1-wire protocol?

Motorized Blinds Put Control At Your Fingertips

September 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

remote_controlled_motorized_blinds

While [Bremster] likes the view from his office window, he often needs to get up and adjust the blinds several times throughout the day in order to keep the glare from killing his eyes. Like any other enterprising hacker, he decided that constantly adjusting them was too repetitive, and that he could automate the process with electronics.

He thought that RC car servos would be a great choice to control the blinds, since they are cheap and the geared drive system offers a lot of torque at low speeds. After modifying the servos to enable continuous rotation, he set off to the hardware store in search of a way to mount them to the blinds’ looped cords.

After mounting some nylon spacers with rubber grommets on the servo arms, he installed them into a set of brackets he built and gave the blinds a spin. Now, he can easily control his blinds from the comfort of his desk with the simple flick of a switch – that’s the kind of ~~laziness~~ ingenuity we can respect!

Continue reading to see a quick video of his motorized blinds in action.

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Easily Movable RFID Door Lock Is Great For Dorm Rooms

September 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 15 Comments

One of the first things that [Eric] hacked together when he got to college was an RFID door locking system. He found that he was often in a rush to get in and out of his dorm room, and that using a simple wireless key was a great way to streamline his days.

Over the years, he has refined his design, and while his original prototype was functional, it was a bit rough around the edges. In the video posted on his site, he thoroughly explains how his system was built, and shows off the revisions he has made over time. One key consideration when building this system was the fact that the installation had to be non-permanent. Since schools typically frown on physically altering your rooms, he found a non-intrusive means to mount his system in the way of zip ties and foam board.

His RFID door lock looks to work quite nicely, and we especially like the inclusion of the reed switch to ensure that the system knows if the door has been opened or not. If you have about half an hour to spare and are interested in building an RFID entry system of your own, be sure to check out [Eric’s] video below for all the details.

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Schäuble Jr Aims To Take Away Your Privacy!

September 18, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 9 Comments

[Mnt] wrote in to tell us about this 360 degree array of cameras featured on [Codeninja]. This has to be one of the most impressive arrays of cameras and sound equipment that we’ve seen at Hack a day.

The array is capable of 360 degree x 140 degree panoramic views using the 9 cameras arranged in a circle around the base. Impressive in itself, these cameras are all capable of both pan and tilt rotation via and Arduino-controlled servo setup. It also has a native 360 degree camera mounted on top of everything for calibration purposes and IR-LED illumination capabilities.

On top of all of this, the camera array also features audio capability with a 9-microphone setup, presumably one for each camera. This, coupled with piezoelectric speakers should provide for echolocation capability. Although jokingly called the “Schäuble Jr.” after a German politician, we’re not sure of the true purpose for this “sensor array.” We can only hope that it will be used for good. A very impressive build, it will be interesting to see what comes of it.