Half Hour Halloween Hack
by Steve Struebing on Oct.30, 2009, under technoPHILE

Skull furious you have entered his space
Halloween came out of nowhere this year for me. I have not had the time to do much of anything having just moved into a new house, so I took it upon myself to quickly whip up something to get into the Halloween mood. I was at a local store and saw these little foam skulls for $1.50 and grabbed a couple. Its fun to see what can be made quickly, and now I have something to put outside when the trick-or-treaters arrive.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtpxKK6kfi4
The materials:
Parallax Infrared Motion Sensor #555-28027
ioBridge Control Module + Servo Smart Board (or arduino + motor shield, if preferred)
Hobbyist Servo
Resistor
Glue Gun
Mini-breadboard (I used my arduino protoshield from adafruit)
Some wire
2 Red Leds
Sharpie
Foam Skull
1 Sock (yeah, the hood is a black sock)
The object here was to simply make the skull do something when someone approached. I know this is FAR from original, but hey, I was pressed for time (and want to show that simple projects are really accessible to ANYONE) and didn’t want to do much planning. So, the project was born. I know I am not breaking any new ground here, but it didn’t detract from my bliss at annoying any co-worker who stepped in my office for the last 2 days. It did make the meetings more fun when the skull open his mouth to speak whenever a colleague would adjust their chair!
Steps:

Foam skull purchased for $1.50.
1- Took a saw to the lower jaw of the foam skull to detach it.

Lower jaw has been sawn off so it can be hinged
2- Bored 2 holes through the eye sockets out the back of the skull to run the LEDs and wires through

Bored 2 eyes into sockets to run LEDs into.

Testing that the LEDs are working and solder joints didn't break when inserting into skull.
3- Attached 2 long wires to the LED leads (drop of solder on each lead)
4- Whipped up a little rig for the servo and skull to sit on
5- Glue gunned lower jaw onto servo rig

Used glue gun to affix lower jaw.
6- Used sharpie to color in jaw (previously white because of styrofoam) and teeth.
7- Ran wires appropriately: (Digital Output – Eyes, Motion Sensor – Digital In, Servo Smartboard -Channel 1)

ioBridge wired up.

Parallax Infrared Motion Sensor #555-28027 on a protoshield from adafruit.
8- Set up messaging and triggers on ioBridge (or read digital input and write outputs if using arduino)
Note: I was actually unaware that the messaging and triggers for ioBridge were there, and they are easy to use (basically following the mantra of the platform). For an arduino, a simple read from the digitalIO and write to a PWM output using the servo library would do the trick, no problem!

Mouth closed.

Mouth opened.
9- Put sock over the skull

Skull with hood (not a gold-toe).
10- Annoy co-workers or greet tricker treaters.
November 1st, 2009 on 9:57 pm
[…] Jaw Dropping Skull (aka the Half Hour Hallow Hack) by Steve from Polymythic […]
November 2nd, 2009 on 8:36 am
Excellent. Skeletor approves. I’m glad you continue to put your Construx to use.
November 17th, 2009 on 12:30 pm
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