It's alive...

Got the hand moving after about 20 hours of 3D printing parts. I have some metal gear micro servos coming next week but was able to scavange enough plastic gear servos off other projects for this test. 82,90,59,0,B

3RD HAND

I think I finally found the perfect robotic hand.  This finger was pretty easy to print out and assemble.  79,87,54,0,B

from the "art"chives..

Unearthed an old project from my high school days - a crude model of a hand with fingers that moved when the crank was turned.  Since I have been doing a lot of animatronic experiments lately, it got me to thinking that I should make a 3D printed version that I can animate with a microcontroller and servo motors.  76,85,71,0,B

printer back in business...

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2 axis test...

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more heads...

Rumor has it - this project will require 6 heads...

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TinyTalkingHead

3D printed head 1.3" tall with mount

for micro servo actuation of the mouth. 

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Movement programming - Part A

Got delivery on Friday of more Arduino Nano microcontrollers so I could try this out.  Amazed once again that this actually worked as advertised when I wired everything up and ran the code.  The only problem with this method is the programming only runs while the microcontroller is powered.  It is lost when powered off.  Another controller that is a bit more robust and some metal gear servos coming next Friday for the robotic arm project.  Until then I will try to figure out something clever to do with what I have.  99,103,65,0,B

Movement programming...

Waiting on parts to try these two methods.

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Bright eyes demo...

This is the second try at installing lights for the eyes.  The first product I bought said it was "bendable" but was stiff plexiglass that ended up breaking even when I tried to heat it to bend.  There were no specific instructions on how to bend it.  What I am using here worked out perfectly as it is made out of soft polyvinyl chloride and very bendable without having to apply any heat.  98,105,67,0,B  

more eye work...

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check out those little eyes...

This build was inspired by early 20th century fortune teller machines. I came across the iron giant while looking for a design for a new talking head project. The 1999 animated science fiction film "The Iron Giant" was the directorial debut of Brad Bird. Among many other projects, he worked for several years on The Simpsons and went on to direct the animated features The Incredibles and Ratatouille with Pixar Studios. After a major career in animation, he made the unprecedented move to live action directing Tom Cruise in Ghost Protocol and George Clooney in Tomorrowland. Bird is the nephew of an English teacher I had back in my high school days. 91,99,64,0,B

IG Box

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IG Box

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Bright eyes...

Rigged the new talking head so the eyes light up when the LEDs on my Echo Dot are activated - using an LDR (light dependent resistor) that "sees" when the Dot LEDs are on.  88.93,71,0,B

one spare sound board for the next project...

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more jawduino boards

Prepping new sound boards.  I have more mouths to move...

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code flop...

Ever since I successfully fired up the eye mechanism, the only thing that annoyed me was that the up/down control of the eyeballs was reversed on the joystick - pushing up made the eyes look down and pushing down made them look up.  Decided to dig into the code and fix that.  Through a little trial and error, I was finally able to figure out which numbers to switch so the joystick would work correctly.  Note: In the Arduino IDE (where the program is edited) - adding two forward slashes ( // ) in front of a line of code or comment keeps it visible but deactivates it from being uploaded.  97,104,70,0,B

From a previous life...

Revisited a 27-year-old animatronics project from my prop building days in NYC.  I originally built this using an old manakin head I found in a dumpster and a gimmicky singing Christmas tree that had just come to market in 1996.  I created a hinged jaw then removed the mechanism from the fake tree and stuffed in inside the head to line up with the eyes and mouth.  It worked quite well for a long time and then got "put away" for over two decades until a couple of days ago.  I tried firing it up after all those years, but the motors and audio only partially worked.  So, I gutted the head by removing the old mechanism (except for the speaker) and installed a 9g micro servo to be run by one of my "jawduino" controllers - with audio from an Echo Dot Alexa device for a quick test.  Total project time was 40 minutes.  More to come on this... 94,99,71,0,B

automata...

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