Collaborate Disseminate
Every hacker appreciates how off-the-shelf parts can be combined into something greater, and [bryan.lowder] demonstrates this beautifully with his organ-playing skeleton, a wonderful entry to our 2023 Halloween Contest! Skelly …read more Continue reading 2023 Halloween Hackfest: Organ-playing Skeleton Livens Up Halloween
[Matt Vella] has had a talking, non-posable skeleton knocking around for years. As cool as that sounds, [Matt] is really tired of its three stock phrases. Fast forward to this …read more Continue reading 2023 Halloween Hackfest: Hack Skellington Is the Life of the Party
Stationary pumpkins and motionless skeletons aren’t enough to scare people these days. If you want to really create a fright on Halloween, you need something more convincing. This bike-riding skeleton …read more Continue reading Bike-Riding Skeleton Stalks The Streets on Halloween
It’s the spookiest time of year once again, and hackers across the globe are cobbling together some spine-chilling projects. [Kevin] is amongst them, and has created a spooky, scary skeleton …read more Continue reading Spooky, Scary Skeleton Is Pi Pico Powered
If you’ve ever seen a painting in which the eyes follow you around the room, you might have found that a bit uneasy. [CuriousInventor] has taken that concept further with …read more Continue reading Skeleton Watches You Intensely Because It’s Halloween, Okay
The House of Mouse has been at the forefront of entertainment technology from its very beginnings in an old orange grove in Anaheim. Disney Imagineers invented the first modern animatronics in the 1960s and they’ve been improving the technology ever since, often to the point of being creepy.
But the complicated guts of an animatronic are sometimes too much for smaller characters, so in the spirit of “cheaper, faster, better”, Disney has developed some interesting techniques for animated characters made from wire. Anyone who has ever played with a [Gumby] or other posable wireframe toys knows that eventually, the wire …read more
Continue reading Kinetic Wire Animatronics Bend It Like Disney
The House of Mouse has been at the forefront of entertainment technology from its very beginnings in an old orange grove in Anaheim. Disney Imagineers invented the first modern animatronics in the 1960s and they’ve been improving the technology ever since, often to the point of being creepy.
But the complicated guts of an animatronic are sometimes too much for smaller characters, so in the spirit of “cheaper, faster, better”, Disney has developed some interesting techniques for animated characters made from wire. Anyone who has ever played with a [Gumby] or other posable wireframe toys knows that eventually, the wire …read more
Continue reading Kinetic Wire Animatronics Bend It Like Disney
There are a lot of things to like about [BoneConstructor]’s Skelly the skeleton robot project. Note that we said, “project”. That’s because not only does the robot work well and is built well, but the journey he took to make it contains steps we’ve all taken ourselves. We can say that with confidence since it’s his first, and we’ve all had those.
Skelly started life as a skeleton sitting in [BoneConstructor]’s antique race car at local car shows. Its eyes lit up and it made a moaning sound, which didn’t always work right. From there came lessons learned with head …read more
Continue reading Skelly The Skeleton Is A Scary Good Musician
There are a lot of things to like about [BoneConstructor]’s Skelly the skeleton robot project. Note that we said, “project”. That’s because not only does the robot work well and is built well, but the journey he took to make it contains steps we’ve all taken ourselves. We can say that with confidence since it’s his first, and we’ve all had those.
Skelly started life as a skeleton sitting in [BoneConstructor]’s antique race car at local car shows. Its eyes lit up and it made a moaning sound, which didn’t always work right. From there came lessons learned with head …read more
Continue reading Skelly The Skeleton Is A Scary Good Musician
[Divconstructors] cashed in after Halloween and picked up a skeleton dog prop from the Home Depot, for the simple and logical purpose of turning it into a robot.
The first step was to cut apart the various body parts, followed by adding bearings to the joints and bolting in a metal chassis fabricated from 1/8″ aluminum stock. This is all pretty standard stuff in the Dr. Frankenstein biz. For electronics he uses a Mega with a bark-emitting MP3 shield on top of it. Separately, a separate servo control board manages the dozenish servos — not to mention the tail-wagging stepper. …read more
