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My Halloween Animations


Disparky

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Thanks for the build details. I've kicked aorund building some air driven halloween progs but have resisted...another, not cheap part of the holiday display hobby.  BTW...just love the music choices.

 

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One more quick question please.  What are you using to move the arms and foot for joints?  I am trying to figure that out.  The movement is so realistic.  I figured the foot is from a servo as it does not weigh anything.  However the set-up for the arm has me perplexed as I am sure there is some weight involved.

 

Thanks again.

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6 hours ago, cgiambruno said:

One more quick question please.  What are you using to move the arms and foot for joints?  I am trying to figure that out.  The movement is so realistic.  I figured the foot is from a servo as it does not weigh anything.  However the set-up for the arm has me perplexed as I am sure there is some weight involved.

 

Thanks again.

Hi,

Yes, the foot is light and I'm only the existing joint and a small servo with some threaded rod and a couple rod ends.  The arm has very little weight so I went with a direct drive pan and tilt assembly, much like the head but mounted sideways but with a couple brackets and four bearings I had laying around.  I use one Hitec HS-755MG to bring the arm up/down and one HS-645MG for arm swing out/in.  Those two motions suffice for a decent range and it's good enough for a Halloween display.  I'll post a couple pictures when I get out to the garage.  I don't put a lot of weight or subject the servos to a lot of torque.  It's always a good idea to use gear drive mounts when moving things around quickly and with more weight than a turkey leg (Sorry, been at the theme park too long).  It's difficult to get smooth motion out of the arm when it's mounted directly to the servo shaft.  It would be better to always use a gear drive assembly to take the load off the motor, increase the gear ratio and increase stability and smoothness.  I probably went too far with this response.  So yes, there is some weight but not so much that I could not mount the arm directly to the servo without a gear, however a gear would be a good idea most of the time.

Best,

Chris

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4 hours ago, mpageler said:

Just curious, did you happen to use Trackskull to program some of the servo movements, particulary the head? 

Hello,

This is the first time I've heard of Trackskull.  Does it work well?  I used PCMACS to program all motions.  

Chris

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Started research animaatronics and came acrros a youtube where they programed the head movings via Trackskull softrware.  They still programed the mouth/arm via sequence editor for more sutle movements., 

 

Here's the video link for   Trackskull

Not inexpensive to captre  head movement but sure looks like it would save a ton of time.  $50 for the trackskull software and $100 for a Trackir camera. Software allows you to export to LOR.  Bet you could use the software to capture the main mouth movements and then tweak them in SE. 

 

Looks like each pan/til takes 2 servos? Saw some "3-axis servos" which took 3 servos.

I

 

L

Edited by mpageler
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Looks like fun to program in that way.  I'm a bit ol' fashioned and prefer my slider consoles and rotary pots.  I typically use a Mackie MCU Pro and a Korg nanoKONTROL2 together depending on the animation being programmed.  For the Halloween displays and skeletons I use a basic USB rotary pot console I built myself and PC-MACS software.  I think it's great to have so many options for animation and lighting.  LOR for example, one day I'd like to see how well I can control animation with SE or some variant but It would require an adequate means to record animation data in real time.  I'm talking analog and digital functions with the ability to use USB Midi devices as well as joystick control.  Never cared for on-screen buttons or sliders.  I need to have a real console for programming so I'll need SE to see it and let me map my buttons, sliders, flywheel, etc.. Am I asking too much?  haha..  Seriously, it's nice being able to use the console flywheel to move back and forth along the time line while watching the animation or lighting scroll along "Live".  The show programming software I use doesn't do pixel mapping.. yet.. so I'd like to see SE be able to handle both.  that'd be sweet.

Edited by Disparky
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I should stay focused on lightgs but this animatronics sutff is just too cool.

Watch some more youtubes and got a grasp on how you did the skull.  Was still very fogging on the arm movement.

 

Did you use the same pan/tilt servo mount for both the head and arm or did you go with a smaller one for the arm.  

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This is what I'm working on for 2017. I want to thank Bob Brocovich for the you tube tutorial on how to make the pillars. 

 

 

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With this tread, started research aninatronics and have discovers, you really don'\t want to go cheap on componets  such as 3axis, pan/tilts and servos.

For 3axis kits,  monsterguts and triaxialskulllabs are worth the look see. 

 

An animatronic skeleton would work good in my light dispaly.  Right now, I have a static witch figure that cackles for a few seconds, in between each song. Just an 8 second sequences that I add  inbetween each full song sequences in show scheduler. So for a skeleton, could envision a 30 second sketonton song/monolog.

 

Maybe for christmas, I could throw a santa hat on the skeleton. ;)

 

Edited by mpageler
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  • 2 weeks later...

Your singing skeletons look awesome.  I love it.  The "lamp" face was fantastic.  Great work.

You mention what servos you used for the arms and legs...but what did you use for the mouth, head and eyes.

I assume you only put the skeletons out on Halloween.  Here in the NW we get a lot of rain.  So I am always trying to find water proof components.  It would be a shame to create and program and then have it rain on Halloween.....

 

Sax

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I hate this ythread :)  I now have an animatronic skeleton on the to do list...thanks a lot.   Thought I was just about done in spending significant money on the display.  Firs up, a skeleton for  static display in 2017 and then add the animation for 2018.  Nice quality used skeletons show up on EBAY peridically.   While a frugal DIY'er, just might bite the bullet and get the Monsterguts.com, complete 3-axis skull kit. 

 

 

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4 hours ago, mpageler said:

I hate this ythread :)  I now have an animatronic skeleton on the to do list...thanks a lot.   Thought I was just about done in spending significant money on the display.  Firs up, a skeleton for  static display in 2017 and then add the animation for 2018.  Nice quality used skeletons show up on EBAY peridically.   While a frugal DIY'er, just might bite the bullet and get the Monsterguts.com, complete 3-axis skull kit. 

 

 

They had some really nice stuff 90% off the Halloween store that would have been great props for this.

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On 2/3/2017 at 8:21 AM, mpageler said:

With this tread, started research aninatronics and have discovers, you really don'\t want to go cheap on componets  such as 3axis, pan/tilts and servos.

For 3axis kits,  monsterguts and triaxialskulllabs are worth the look see. 

 

An animatronic skeleton would work good in my light dispaly.  Right now, I have a static witch figure that cackles for a few seconds, in between each song. Just an 8 second sequences that I add  inbetween each full song sequences in show scheduler. So for a skeleton, could envision a 30 second sketonton song/monolog.

 

Maybe for christmas, I could throw a santa hat on the skeleton. ;)

 

Monsterguts skulls not in stock.  Triaxialskulllabs has not been selling for over 3 years.

Most sites that had kits no longer offer them.  The kit has been tough to find.  

The lindberg skull is super hard to find.  Ebay has them but most are around 80-100 bucks. I wonder if this is why they are not available at monsterguts.

 

Skeletonstore.com has a 4th quality Mr Thrifty 2 piece skull for 9 bucks.  skeletonsandmore has a life sized two piece harvey, aged for 25 bucks.  Thinking about getting a couple of the $9 heads to play with and see if i can finally put my servodog to use.  Been sitting on this for over 2 years.  Yes, this thread has motivated me to get in gear.  I am just looking at animating some mouths for now.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you're setting up again this Halloween I'm a local and would love to swing by and see it :)

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...

Hi folks!

The display is nice but if you want 3 axis skulls, consider Halloween Bob, the original creator of the 3 axis skull 10 years ago.

He has nice nice skulls on sale right now at http://halloweenskulls.com/

The eyes move and even light up. And just in time for Halloween he has sequences premade. Plug and play with his 3D printed skulls.

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

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