Thread: Gemmy Skull Hack - Help

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So I just picked up 3 of the Gemmy Skulls ($3 a piece).

I already opened one of them and some of the wiring pulled out of the connector sockets leading from the back of the skull to the front of the skull (the connectors). Sooo I am not good at even LOOKING at this thing!

I was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of the easiest way I can hack this thing so that I can create my own audio for it to move it's jaw and light up it's eyes to. I don't have any electrical experience with soldering, bread boards, circuit boards, etc.

I am, however, willing to learn (assuming its cheap), and is fairly easy.

Can anyone help? I would like to get these guys working great for next Halloween. I'm unsure what I want to do with them yet, though. I suppose talking to each other in some sort.

Thanks for any help! It's much appreciated.

Also: I believe this is one of the older versions. Their eyes do not move. Looks like this:

I hacked a gemmy skull with midi software. It's pretty easy to do but you need to solder to a board. Also some good midi software and a keyboard. You could also activate them with a prop controller running at 5 volts then trigger the jaw, eyes, and leds with that. Here is a mock-up test that took 3min to do. Nothing great but you get the idea:

halloweengemmy033.flv video by Industen - Photobucket

I used a toy motor circuit with one this year with good results. All the parts are available at Radio Shack. You do need to give the circuit an amplified signal - I used one channel from an old set of computer speakers, with the other channel driving a speaker.

YouTube - Halloween 09

Hedg12,
I think I saw that your talking skull had blinking eyes. If so did you tie those through the toy motor circuit also? I looked at the link for the toy motor circuit, is it really as simple as it appears?

Originally Posted by Nepboard

Hedg12,
I think I saw that your talking skull had blinking eyes. If so did you tie those through the toy motor circuit also? I looked at the link for the toy motor circuit, is it really as simple as it appears?

I didn't run the eyes through the circuit (the blinking is an artefact in the video), but there's no reason you couldn't do it. Just make sure to use the proper resistor for the voltage you're running them on. And yes, the circuit really is that simple. It's worked great for me.