Genisis

THE CONCEPT


As I sit wandering and browsing the infinite universe of the internet looking for ideas for this years' haunt I found some easy to follow DIY instructions for animated skeletons. Being how I just adore The Nightmare Before Christmas I have decided to go with that theme and create some animatronic characters to sing and move in my Halloween / Christmas animated light show. My goal is to create several of the characters in life size scale along with a few of the movie props as well. This blog will be a documentation of this journey to reality.


Monday, January 31, 2011

Yes!

I took a breather today from sorting all the goodies I picked up yesterday and in doing so I came across a solution to what might have been a very expensive short cut.  Scary Terry is a circuit board designed to pick up audio and turn it into a signal to drive a servo motor.  They are tunable and built ones run about 40 bucks.  There are a couple of draw backs to using these versus actually programming the entire sequence.  First, and this is the biggie, you can only control one servo.  Also, you need multiple channel audio recordings because you have to pull only the vocal to input into the board.  It can't differentiate between vocals and music.  The great thing  about it is I won't have to program the vocals.  So what is this great and magical solution you might ask?  The schematics and parts list to make one myself.  I checked Mouser and Digi Key and I can pick up the parts and board for less than $20.  Now to buy, trade, and sell on CL so I can order one and try it out.  Oh yeah EBay too lots of stuff to list on EBay...................