Thread: Animatronics controller

Hey everybody, I was looking around the internet to find a controller for an animatronic I want to build, but can't seem to find one. I want to use servo's for the eyes, and maybe jaw movement, possibly the head movement too, although I don't think it would be powerful enough (its going to be BIG), so I figure I will end up using pneumatics. I have yet to find a controller for the servos and the pneumatics in one program, along with the ability to sync it with audio. Does anyone know of anything? Thanks, Christian

the Parallax Prop1 will do it... it has 8 i/o's for trigger, solendoid, LEDS, servos, etc...

by itself it will control servos but you will probably want to use a scary terry/cowlacious board for lip sync
there is fantastic support at www.forums.parallax.com

www.parallaxefx.com
http://www.cowlacious.com/ScaryTerry.htm

hey i am not into that much yet but i do get a catalog from frightprops.com they might have what you want

If you are looking for just the software, you may want to try this. They even have a free demo download to try it out. It's what I use. What I like is that you can control different types of hardware (up to 64 devices) all timed to an audio track. It will even do lip sync.
http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/vsa_overview.htm

I had seen that brookshire one for sale as a servo controller, I never knew it worked for relays and such as well! Is there a way to have an input to it so that you can use a motion detector to trigger events? Thanks, Christian

Christian,

Yes, VSA can be started by triggers with our VSA Console

http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/console_overview.htm

Using VSA Console, you code up a simple script using your favorite language (e.g., Visual Basic), to start playback based on some event. The "trigger" is limited only to what you can hook up to your PC.