Thread: DMX Pirate Treasure Display

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Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share the makings of my latest prop. It's been a while since I actually made my own prop, rather than help out with someone else's display (I live in a condo), so it was fun getting back into the making spirit.

I put this together to take to the Maker Faire in San Mateo, to get the word out about what the Medusa boards can do. If you've never been to a Maker Faire, you owe it to yourself - it's fantastic! The only bummer was, since I had to stay at the display most of the time, I didn't get to see everyone else's stuff.

But I digress......

Here's the display, with a description after the bump
Maker Faire '11 - Animated pirate and treasure chest


Here's a little description of the characters, and some construction details...

Juan The Skeleton
A Lindberg rack and pinion skull from graveyardskulls.com The R/P mechanism is fantastic. It made for very nimble and accurate moves during the animation. Juan is flaunting the latest in pirate faux leather vests, as designed and constructed by my mother.


The Treasure Chest
This started as a great deal I found at the Halloween Club store off of the 5 FWY. For $10, I got a big pre-painted styrofoam chest, that was supposed to velcro itself together, but fell over if you blew on it. Luckily, I didn't care, because I was planning to put a plywood box insde to hold all the electronics and pneumatics. Thanks again, to Mary Ann Zipagang, for helping secure all 400 (!!) shimmering gold coins to the top of the chest.


Here's a shot inside the chest, while I was putting it together. This is about half the wiring that ended up being in there. (still missing from the photo are the wires for Juan The Skeleton, and the spot and flood lights). At the bottom, you can see a server power supply I got from All Electronics (.com, if you're not local). I used this to power the whole display (+12, +5 only). At the left you can see both air cylinders, one to 'jump' the chest, and the other to open the lid. At the back, there's a regulator (to control the force of the 'jump') and a flow control valve (to control the speed the lid opens). Each cylinder uses a MAC 3-way valve, switched by a relay.


The Lighting
Just beneath the lid are several high-powered LEDs ('0.5W', ~$1/ea from eBay), to light up the gold, the Medusa board, as well as a moving gleam that can be seen at the beginning of the routine. I used small diameter copper tubing to sheath the LEDs, and glued piano wire with JB Quick to the tubing, so I could then aim the LEDs. I don't recco this, though, since the JB Quick didn't hold onto the piano wire well. However, the LEDs did a great job of making the gold glow


Two frontal lights were used, one to light up the chest (static LED flood from macetech), and another controlled DIY mini-spot, to light up Juan. The mini-spot is something I built out of PVC, and (4) of the aformentioned 0.5W LEDs from eBay. There's a red, green, blue, and a UV LED in the fixture, although, for this display, I only used the red and blue.


Also starring Sir Not Appearing in this Film, as the Cannon which did not fire. My father built a beautiful mini-cannon out of wood and PVC, but we ran out of time, and didn't get to hook the smoke, air blast, and LED into the routine. Perhaps in a later video.

For control, I used VSA, an Enttec Pro, and a Medusa DMX board. Here's the channel layout...

Switch outputs
1. Treasure Chest jump
2. Treasure Chest lid
3. [Unused]
4. [Unused]
5. [Unused]
6. [Unused]
7. [Unused]
8. [Unused]

Servo outputs
1. Juan eye Up/Dn
2. Juan eye L/R
3. Juan nod
4. Juan turn
5. Juan tilt
6. Juan jaw
7. Treasure Chest gleam
8. [Unused]

LED outputs
1. Treasure Chest gleam
2. Gold coins amber left
3. Gold coins amber right
4. Medusa spotlight
5. Juan eye red
6. Juan eye green
7. Juan spotlight red
8. Juan spotlight blue

Thanks for reading!
- Hook

Wow awesome job!! Can't wait to get into stuff like this! Great idea and job on promoting the medusa board!

Great work! Love the chest animation!

Great job! I'd love to play with your boards if I ever make the DMX jump. I was at Maker Faire with CalHaunts NorCal...I can't believe I missed you! I didn't get to walk around much either.

This was such a fun exhibit - that picture with the kid's face captures it all.

People stood around and watched the entire sequence a couple of times through. (I know I did!)

Your stuff is just so clever. You're a natural I think.

I was working on our coffin yesterday and I got the 12volt linear actuator to work for opening the lid but 2 things. The opening is a little too slow and the wood in the coffin seems to really amplify the sound of the motor in the actuator. I like the speed that your treasure chest opens with. I think you told me about using regulators on pneumatic cylinders to adjust the speed and so I'm thinking I might copy what you did with your treasure chest. If you could tell me what I would need that would be great. The coffin lid is fairly light but I'm sure its heavier than a foam lid and since I'd want to mount it near the hinge, it's going to have to be able to lift what might be a substantial weight. I have no idea how I would determine what components would be suitable.

I was also thinking about trying a 24volt power source for the actuator. That might speed things up but then I have to find a way to mount the servo to isolate the vibration/noise of the motor. Do you think running that motor at 24 volts would wreck it?

Now that is cool!!

Buck,

If you mount the actuator vertical in the chest, you should be able to control the speed easily by moving the lift pivot further or closer the the hinge side. To reduce noise you could mount the actuator on rubber grommets and inserts. What you want to do is find rubber grommets that will fit into the mounting holes of the actuator. Then use an insert, washer and heavy spring to allow you to mount the unit without compressing it against the chest. So the actuator will basically float away from the chest. The springs need to be strong enough to counter any torque that could cause the body of the actuator to touch the chest. For the insert you can use a blind nut and cut off the wood tangs. The washer should fit over the insert from the other side. The spring should be slightly smaller than the washer but large enough that the bolt will not touch. If you use the blind nuts, you can either screw your bolt in from that side and bolt from the rear of the chest, or you can screw from the rear of the chest into the blind nut. In the latter, your bolts need to extend past the blind nut so you cna put a locking nut on as well.

This is awesome! Great job. I really gotta make better use of my two Medusa boards this year

Thanks, everyone, for the kudos!

Mr. Chicken,
I did stop by their booth, but I was on a warpath, trying to see as much as I could of the show. Didn't stay long. Bummer I didn't get to meet you!

Jeff,
I know... that kid's expression is classic - that's the kinda stuff that makes all the work worth it.

B'Dude,
Thanks! That's quite a compliment, coming from a guy with a display as elaborate as yours! As for my coffin, there were two components in there, to control the type of motion I got. The regulator controls the pressure to both the 'jump' cylinder, and the lid. The pressure will affect both speed and ultimate force, so I used it to set the jumping force. Then, I used a flow control valve (after the regulator, but outputting only to the lid cylinder) to control the speed of the lid opening. The shutting of the lid and the collapse of the chest after a jump were uncontrolled, and based solely on the weight of each.

Voltage doesn't usually kill motors. Too much current can kill them, by melting stuff or demagnetizing the permanent magnets, and too much speed can kill them, by destroying the bearings. As long as you don't have much load on the motor, you probably won't have too much current, and probably won't have a problem The advantage to air control is that you have a much wider range of speed and force you can apply, for a low price.

- Hook