Monsters in Familab

Beware FamiLAB!!  There be monsters here!

This year I decided to do something special for Halloween and with a little inspiration from a trip to the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, I decided to make a monster in a box.So first off a simple box. Some rough cut lumber and a few nails later (yeah it's never that easy).  This box was rather large as I had planned to have some other effects, but time ran short.  I'll save the tentacle monster for next yearNext up was a way to lift the lid and bang it a bit randomly. The teeth are random in start time and height, with one exception.   The extra large turn is to give the eyes a chance to peek out. Of course there's always were a few snags... over tightened the shaft coupler and cracked the PLA wheel mount.  Rebuilt in ABS and off we go.

Here is a picture of the lid raising mechanism fully assembled.  This geared motor is running at 5 rpm

 

And another shot of the box, with the roller which rides along the 'saw-blade' wheel.  Turns out the small riser I had to bump the wheel sensor was off a bit, so in the good tradition of FamiLAB I patched it with some blue tape.

The lighted eyes were on loan so I couldn't hack the wires. To get them to light up at the correct time I needed to switch the power on and off via the Arduino.  I took an extension cord and hacked it adding in a relay and some leads that go off to the Arduino. Between the relay and the Arduino I have an L293D to handle the extra voltage for the relay and protect the Arduino.

There were a lot of different effects that I wanted.  I ended up using almost every single available pin on the Arduino.

1. Fog Machine on/off2. The 'sawblade' wheel3. A switch for the wheel (used for timing)4. Eyeball lights5. PIR Motion Sensor6. WaveShield

Stuff it all in the box, and then....

 

Showtime!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktWzyzNJrTI

Got to watch the PIR sensors, they are crazy sensitive.  The neighbor walking his dog on the other side of the street set it off. Hilarity ensued.