Monday, October 13, 2008


The controller is made up of an Arduino (bottom board), a Wave Shield (middle board) from Ada Fruit and a prototype board (top board) outfitted with an RF receiver (side ways on the top board). The Arduino is the brains of the outfit and allows me to program the behavior of the setup. The Arduino processes all the signals and, based on the firmware I wrote, will act accordingly. The Arduino talks to the Wave Shield to play audio files from an SD card on the Wave Shield. The Arduino also controls 6 relays which control the lights, fog machine and values which allow air into 5 pneumatic cylinders. The cylinders then will shake the crate, bang on the crate, lift the lid, and pop the gorilla mask out in two stages, first up then out. More details will follow...

Sunday, October 12, 2008


This the the latest project in my Halloween series. It is a gorilla which pops out of a crate. The crate is fully remote and motion activated. The setup features an Arduino controller board which controls the relays which control the values which activate the pneumatic cylinders which make the lid open, gorilla pop up and the crate shake. More descriptions and pictures will follow, stay tuned.