Slacktivate

Robot = Done

After a ton of work I’ve finished my Halloween animatronics project. I was going to post a cool video documenting everything but I am way to lazy at the moment. Someday I’ll come back and document how I did this. I just need to put the footage together.

Edit The Firefox Dictionary

The Firefox spell check tool is both awesome and incredibly flawed at the same time. It is super easy to accidentally add misspelled words to the dictionary as the “Add to dictionary” button is next to the spelling suggestions. This has caused me to add almost all my misspelled words to the Firefox dictionary rendering it useless. Unfortunately there is no built in tool within Firefox to edit the dictionary.

In complete frustration I made a little tool yesterday to remove misspelled words from the dictionary. It’s really basic but it does the job of editing the Firefox dictionary. I can’t be the only one out there with this problem so I am posting a copy of the tool here for the world. Think of this as a alpha version that works and gets the job done.

Download Firefox Dictionary Edit
http://www.slacktivate.com/slack/files/dicedit.zip
For XP and VISTA only!

Robot Test #2

This is a second test of the robot torso with more range of movement. I wanted to see if it could perform a wide range of movement without the cloth causing problems. Looking back I should have sped it up a bit but I am happy with the results anyways. All I have now is to build the legs and head. This will require I track down a costume for my creation first. I don’t know when I will have the basic animatronics tutorial ready. Likely about a month after I finish this project.

Robot Test #1

I really will finish the robot tutorial someday soon. Just built this last night. I a made a really basic 7 second movement to test the electronics.

Animatronics For Everybody (Part 1)

In this 5 part series I will cover creating basic computer controlled animatronic figures using cheap parts and the best off the shelf software. At the end of this series you will have a fully animated figure that will be able to sing songs and scare pets. Every month I will be adding onto this series until the project is finished. The end result will be a figure that has double jointed arms, a swiveling head, and a fast moving mouth. I’ll then explain how create a soundtrack and add cloth or fur to finish with a realistic creature. The creation of more advanced projects will also be discussed.

Here is my previous creation. I’ll be taking it apart and building a new creature with you during this series. This guy was a monster I built for Halloween. He has fully movable arms, a swiveling head, moving mouth, and ability to breath smoke.

Parts Required:

• 1 Mini SSC2 module
• 1 Serial to USB cable
• 6 HS-311 servos
• 1 AC-DC adapter 6v 2.1a
• 1 copy of Brookshire Software’s VSA
• 1 Box of wood coffee stirrers
• 1 Windows computer 98/NT/2000/XP with a serial or USB port

You will also need:

• Hot glue
• Electrical Tape
• Scissors
• Audacity

Next time we will test out the servos and software. We will then begin to put together a frame for the creature.