Post by merkyl999x on Aug 18, 2016 20:21:30 GMT
Hey guys and gals!
New to the site, think it's a pretty fun resource for people trying to get into animatronics. I'm a code guy lucky enough to work at an awesome company that gives us quarterly hack days with a 200$ budget. This time around, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at putting together a remote controlled shoulder puppet. The RC part is mostly taken care of in-house, as we create IoT mesh network radios (synapse-wireless.com for anyone interested) so I will be leveraging those for my control parts. The radio is essentially an ATMega processor that can control/read ~20-30 IO (depending on the exact model.)
The part I'm struggling a bit with is trying to get a solid idea on how to handle the actual mechanics of everything.
The basic idea is that I'll be doing gather positional data from a gryo/accelerometer and messing around with using that plus some switches to build up gesture control for the puppet. The controller would be built into a 'dragon-trainer's glove' that you would wear and interface with the puppet.
As an added bonus, I'll be able to have some interaction between puppets once I get it put together which I think will be pretty fun, and it's more or less a free bonus of using the mesh networking radios.
All that said, has anyone messed around with beefing up the existing shoulder puppets that are out there? I can fairly easily hack one of our nodes into some existing hardware if someone knows of a reasonable rig/toy to use as a base. Past that, I'm fine (and rather interested) in trying to put together something of my own, just figured it's always better to ask rather than stumbling blindly into new territory.
Huge thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give.
New to the site, think it's a pretty fun resource for people trying to get into animatronics. I'm a code guy lucky enough to work at an awesome company that gives us quarterly hack days with a 200$ budget. This time around, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at putting together a remote controlled shoulder puppet. The RC part is mostly taken care of in-house, as we create IoT mesh network radios (synapse-wireless.com for anyone interested) so I will be leveraging those for my control parts. The radio is essentially an ATMega processor that can control/read ~20-30 IO (depending on the exact model.)
The part I'm struggling a bit with is trying to get a solid idea on how to handle the actual mechanics of everything.
The basic idea is that I'll be doing gather positional data from a gryo/accelerometer and messing around with using that plus some switches to build up gesture control for the puppet. The controller would be built into a 'dragon-trainer's glove' that you would wear and interface with the puppet.
As an added bonus, I'll be able to have some interaction between puppets once I get it put together which I think will be pretty fun, and it's more or less a free bonus of using the mesh networking radios.
All that said, has anyone messed around with beefing up the existing shoulder puppets that are out there? I can fairly easily hack one of our nodes into some existing hardware if someone knows of a reasonable rig/toy to use as a base. Past that, I'm fine (and rather interested) in trying to put together something of my own, just figured it's always better to ask rather than stumbling blindly into new territory.
Huge thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give.
