Thread: Walmart Talking Skull hack???

Tweet

Hey everyone,
I bought a skull at walmart that when you press the try me button it sings a song as its jaw moves. i wanted to find out how to make it says what i want and hack it to be my greeter for next year introducing my haunt? if someone can direct me to some supplies i will need or someone that has done this before possibly help me out. i would like to start buying parts so links would be helpful!
Thanks,
CHris

I am not familiar with the skull you are talking about but it sounds like a Gemmy talking skull. You can take a peek at my Mansion At Midnight blog which has a link to a midi page that is probably the best hack in my opinion. If you dont go the midi route, you will need a color organ or light organ which converts sound to ac voltage which you can use to drive an ac coil relay to switch dc voltage to drive the skull. If you dont know what I am suggesting above you probably should go the midi route I think their product is best approach but you better hurry Halloween will sneak up on you!

Or you can find an old "Talking Thru Boris" skull, which is designed specifically to do what you want. Unfortunately, they haven't been made for the past 2 years, so they've gone WAY up in price lately.

Here's a link to a hack that looks to be specific for the skull you have:

http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread...+talking+skull

thanks for the helpful info everyone! i will try this out my motor that moves the jaw is good right should i get a picaxe controller or just go with the hack route

Well I wish that page had been around when I started my hacks a few years back! Nice link, thanks for that!

Just be careful about the wall wart, the amp draw of the wall wart cannot exceed what the color organ can supply, it looks like they can supply around 200 watts? I had larger wall wart power supplies and it just didnt work plugging them into the color organ. Once I went with smaller power supplies the color organ drove them fine.... just something to be aware of.