Ok, here is an update to my progress on this. I just finished designing the carriage power train and have ordered the necessary parts and hopefully with any luck, I will have them on Friday and the build will start again.

For any of you looking for gears, pulleys, bearings and what not for your props I found this site and wow, do they have whatever you can think of: Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instrument

So anyway, here is my design idea powered by one wiper motor turned into a multi turn servo to be controlled by a Medusa board. Originally I was thinking of doing two carriages (one for each hand) but that would be one servo over the capacity of the Medusa so I am down to one. I might however add a pneumatic rod and a second carriage connected to it and have hand separation that way, we will see.

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Did I do that?

Darn it! Now I really need to animate my pedals as well.

Course I also have to remember where I put them!

This looks really cool, but I don't understand what you are doing. What is this for?

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Xpendable
Drury Lane Cemetery: www.hauntsoft.com

This is the mechanism that will make my skeletons hands travel up and down the length of the keyboard while his hands move up and down (that mechanism is not drawn on this) as if he is playing the organ using VSA and a hacked wiper motor so his movement will be programmable not random.

My plan is to be like the video below with the exception that his arms will not be stationary and his body will be able to lean in and out from the keyboard as if he was playing more intensely.

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Did I do that?

Great! I'm working on a very similar prop...different design for the arm movement, but I'm curious to see how you move his body... I might have to do some idea-stealing

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ChickenHaunt.blogspot.com

Actually the body movement is (or so I think) the easier challenge. I am using the blow mold skeleton from Garden Ridge and have already removed its spine shaft and replaced it with a metal ¼ inch threaded dowel that I plan on having run thru the organ bench on a single axis pivot connected to a wiper motor servo.

The only challenge I had was to find an H-bridge servo controller board able to handle enough amps for the motor to work well. After trying (and frying) a HS-54745 servo amp from Lynxmotion, like the one Dr. Morbius used in his ground breaker, I found and bought 4 of these Pololu - Pololu Jrk 12v12 USB Motor Controller with Feedback that have a voltage range between 6 and 16 volts and a continuous output current of 12 amps with a peak of 30 amps. These should be able to power the heck out of the wiper servos and I hope to test them this weekend if the rest of my parts come in.

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Did I do that?

It looks like you are going to have an amazing prop! Please, if not asking too much, take photos of your build. No one out there has really done a consummate "how-to" on the haunted organist prop, and I would love to see how the device works from top to bottom.

great work! think the schematics would have given me a headache though...lol...not good from a female who actually stepped out into the world of Auto mechanics. (and came back due to health problems....but it was fun while it lasted)

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"We accommodate the living, but who shall accommodate the dead?" ~ Blackbeard's Ghost

I used to be ASE certified in automotive electronics (a long, long, long time ago), this is not too much deferent than a D-deck II unit, or whatever it is now

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Did I do that?

Yeah, but all schematics gave me a headache.lol

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"We accommodate the living, but who shall accommodate the dead?" ~ Blackbeard's Ghost