Animatronic Costume, finished.
FireHopper
Posts: 180
I am to the point now with the costume that I consider it finished. it would only get tweaks from here on in..
My Project was to convert a costume I had custom made to remote control. When I had purchased the costume in 2003, it came with a analog controller that used flex sensors and 556 timers to control the 6 R/C hobby servos in the wings. Shortly after then, the flex sensors started to fail, I changed to regular pot's. But it was clumsy.
In 2004 I had a friend who was into animatronics build me a custom servo controller that gathers serial data from a Compaq Ipaq 3835 pocket pc. I wrote a custom program for that using visual basic for embedded devices, to send serial commands to this servo controller. (which only had 8 outputs), you touch the screen and it sends commands.. it was not something that worked well due to having to have a wire from the Ipaq to the wingpack, plus the short battery life of the ipaq,
I started to look for something better. The commands the serial servo controller I was using were simple. But still a bit of a pain.
A433B334C323D343E443F545G665H333
Each servo had its own letter, ABCDEFGH and then you added on each position. And you could go and send just commands to the servos you wanted to move, but like I said.. The method was cludgy, And then I found parallax's website!
The gentleman I had make the servo controller charged me $100 for the first one, and he wanted $100 for an updated one that controlled more servos, plus had some other features.. I found parallax while looking for something cheaper.. And fell in love with the Serial servo controller, then sat down and had to figure out how to make it work. I found a 12 channel wireless transmitter/reciever pair on ebay, and knew that was I needed.. I currently use just 8 of those 12 inputs.
I went to radio shack and found the “What is a microcontroller” kit that featured a basic stamp 2 micro controller! It took me a few days of waiting for things to arrive while I messed with the WAM kit.
Once I bread boarded the basic circuit together.. I realised that the WAM basic stamp would not fit in the wing backpack. I then ordered a OEM basic stamp 2. and when it arrived, started installing things in the backpack. Then I had to write the code.. basic stamp makes it childs play, the code is very short.
I've been running on this for years now, and I am extremely happy with parallax's products! I had to order another PSC, when the one I had somehow burned out the serial input pin [noparse]:([/noparse] So I ordered a PSC USB to replace the standard PSC I had been using. I'm hoping this one lives a good long time.
I might eventually change to a propeller, but that would possibly be over kill... Here is the code I used
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/wingpacktwo.bs2
I modified the wireless receiver to disable the relays that were activated when a button was pressed to go and save battery life.
Links to pictures and schematic, and youtube video
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/gallery.html << pictures here of the wingpack
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/wings.pdf << Schematic
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/renfaire2/·<< pictures of the completed costume at a local renfaire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr0CtnNMF9s· << youtube video of the costume at a local renfaire
Post Edited (FireHopper) : 5/19/2008 2:16:38 PM GMT
My Project was to convert a costume I had custom made to remote control. When I had purchased the costume in 2003, it came with a analog controller that used flex sensors and 556 timers to control the 6 R/C hobby servos in the wings. Shortly after then, the flex sensors started to fail, I changed to regular pot's. But it was clumsy.
In 2004 I had a friend who was into animatronics build me a custom servo controller that gathers serial data from a Compaq Ipaq 3835 pocket pc. I wrote a custom program for that using visual basic for embedded devices, to send serial commands to this servo controller. (which only had 8 outputs), you touch the screen and it sends commands.. it was not something that worked well due to having to have a wire from the Ipaq to the wingpack, plus the short battery life of the ipaq,
I started to look for something better. The commands the serial servo controller I was using were simple. But still a bit of a pain.
A433B334C323D343E443F545G665H333
Each servo had its own letter, ABCDEFGH and then you added on each position. And you could go and send just commands to the servos you wanted to move, but like I said.. The method was cludgy, And then I found parallax's website!
The gentleman I had make the servo controller charged me $100 for the first one, and he wanted $100 for an updated one that controlled more servos, plus had some other features.. I found parallax while looking for something cheaper.. And fell in love with the Serial servo controller, then sat down and had to figure out how to make it work. I found a 12 channel wireless transmitter/reciever pair on ebay, and knew that was I needed.. I currently use just 8 of those 12 inputs.
I went to radio shack and found the “What is a microcontroller” kit that featured a basic stamp 2 micro controller! It took me a few days of waiting for things to arrive while I messed with the WAM kit.
Once I bread boarded the basic circuit together.. I realised that the WAM basic stamp would not fit in the wing backpack. I then ordered a OEM basic stamp 2. and when it arrived, started installing things in the backpack. Then I had to write the code.. basic stamp makes it childs play, the code is very short.
I've been running on this for years now, and I am extremely happy with parallax's products! I had to order another PSC, when the one I had somehow burned out the serial input pin [noparse]:([/noparse] So I ordered a PSC USB to replace the standard PSC I had been using. I'm hoping this one lives a good long time.
I might eventually change to a propeller, but that would possibly be over kill... Here is the code I used
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/wingpacktwo.bs2
I modified the wireless receiver to disable the relays that were activated when a button was pressed to go and save battery life.
Links to pictures and schematic, and youtube video
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/gallery.html << pictures here of the wingpack
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/application/wings.pdf << Schematic
http://www.chameleon.net/~firehopper/renfaire2/·<< pictures of the completed costume at a local renfaire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr0CtnNMF9s· << youtube video of the costume at a local renfaire
Post Edited (FireHopper) : 5/19/2008 2:16:38 PM GMT
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