Thread: Singing Pumpkins using servos

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Hi.

I made a few (8) animated skulls last year and I thought this year it would be kewl to make some singing pumpkins using the foam pumpkins from the Craft store.

I am planning on making their mouths move like the Muppet Beaker (I think I spelled his name right) and I want to make their eyes light up as their mouths move.

Any help and/or suggestions would be most welcome.

Thank you.

P.S. I will take pics of my progress for those that are interested and post those in the main Tutorials section.

I think that's a great idea ! Good luck and hope to see what you come up with.

I did a trio of singing pumpkins several years ago using foam pumpkins. I also wanted them to have left/right movement. After animating the mouths, I mounted them on 3/8 shafts that pass through bearings with an arm at the bottom. I linked all 3 so they would turn together using a single 1/4 scale (very large) servo. They are mounted to a short prop wall that also houses an opening door with an animated mouth and eyes inside. (also servo controlled)
I couldn't find a picture of the back side of the wall but I will keep looking, I know it's somewhere.

Lighting the eyes should be easy enough using a micro switch tripped by your mouth servo.

And yet again spookineer shows off his awesomeness which leaves me speechless. Very kewl.

OMG how cool that would be.
I would love to see the video of those pumpkins in action.

If I were to tackle this project, I'd probably choose to go the route of Mike Cathcart from HGTV's Extreme Halloween special a few years back. He made The Great Pumpkin out of foam rubber with servos inside to animate the pumpkin more like a living creature (ie: the mouth flexes, rather than the ventriloquist dummy type of movement).
If you need reminding of what it looked like (I know I did), there's a few seconds of it here:
Dusk 2006 Halloween

On that same show, Rick Polizzi of Boney Island had some singing pumpkins more like the ones Spookineer made. There's a shot of them in this (around 4:40):
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCrUEIywuW4]YouTube - Boney Island Yard Haunt 2007[/ame]

Hi all. I am still in the R&D phase of putting these together and I am trying to figure out what would be a good servo to use for the pumpkins. I need a servo with enough strength to open and close the mouth quickly without burning out. Any ideas? I thought about going with the Hitec 425BB but I'm not sure if that would be strong enough to handle the mouth movements. Thanks.

the 425 servo should be plenty. If it can hold up a plastic skull, it should have no problem with a foam pumpkin mouth.
Just to be safe, you might buy just one and see how it goes.