Skully - Animatronic Skull

thingiverse

Decided to create a life-like animatronic skull for Halloween! This motion control system is inspired by Bottled Lightning's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwPx53iEUiY. I wanted to try integrating the servos into the UV mechanism itself. Printing: I used a 150mm x 200mm print bed to create this project. For the top of the skull, I chose zero bottom layers, no infill, and three perimeters to achieve a hollow part. Assembly: I modified the skull design by hollowing it out to make room for servos. The mandible is attached using holes drilled into the skull's bottom and through the upper part of the mandible. A small hole was also drilled to attach fishing line to a 9G servo mounted underneath the plate. A hexagon shape serves as a coupler for a 5/16" threaded rod, which is connected to a threaded rod. I use this setup along with some nuts and a bracket attached to an old chair to hold the skeleton in place. A little neck disk helps secure the skeleton. Control System: This animatronic skull is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an HTML 5 capable browser using a USB Xbox 360 controller. You can add MP3 files to the assets folder, modify the songdefinitions.json file to point at those files, and edit the servo definition file to account for pin numbers and fine-tune servo positions. Servo Controller: I'm utilizing an AIY Voice Shield (V1) from Google, but only using the button that came with the kit and the audio out to desktop speakers. Eye Components: The eyes are made up of glass baubles and 1.44" SPI LCD modules from Adafruit: https://learn.adafruit.com/animated-electronic-eyes-using-teensy-3-1/3d-printing. I created my own "shield" using protoboard and connected it with rainbow wire to the rest of the system.