Crystal Ball

Crystal_Ball.zip (142071Bytes)

The Crystal Ball of Horror was my entry into the http://www.tinyclr.com/ Halloween contest.

UPDATE: 11/11-2010

I got second place in the contest http://www.tinyclr.com/ :-) and I'm very happy with that. This gave me a coupon for $150 so I just ordered two more FEZ Panda Tinkerer Kits and a SD card extension board.

I wanted to make something that wouldn’t scare the kids so much that they would keep me up at night, but still be a good Halloween prop.
Coming from Norway, Halloween is relative new to us and not many having any props outside the house.

I had this mounted on outside on Halloween and it gave quit a few children a fright. :-)

I started out buying a plastic light fixture and built a box around that to contain the electronics.
The box had to hold;

  • FEZ Domino as I wanted to use the SD card and audio playback
  • PIR sensor to trigger the animation (concealed behind the keyhole)
  • A circuit board to hold transistors controlling the RGBs
  • $5,- amplifier
  • Speaker
  • Servo, RGBs, an ultra bright LED and other stuff

 

The plan was just to superimpose a pumpkin head but that wasn’t all that cool so I came up with the idea of making an eye instead and it came out pretty good.

Some more pictures from the build

PA141370.jpg

The $5,- amplifier

PA211391.jpg

PA301405.jpg

 

The eye is a clip art iris printed out on overhead film and glued onto a piece of Plexiglas.


The programming was easy with NETMF (I do hope more of you people would check it out).

I probably won’t win the competition but still it was a fun project to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzZOVsafe3Q

Wow, specially that

Wow, specially that projector of the eye works REALLY well. What an idea for a robot eye!! Cool. And in general; Impressive “artwork”, nice!

Agreed!

The projected iris is truly original and beautifully executed.

You get a double-whammy with
You get a double-whammy with the simultaneous scream and visual affect. I jumped back while watching it on my screen…very affective. Nice job!!

Brilliant Geir

Excellent design, beautifully executed.  

Really nice

Nice work again Geir and thanks for sharing this.

 

It would be great to see the

It would be great to see the reaction of a poor soul who is spooked by this. Very nice work!

Thank you all for your kind

Thank you all for your kind comments.

The ‘eye’ has gone into storage for next year and the FEZ Domino has been taken out as I need that for my Whirligig project. But next year I might try to shoot some video of people reacting to it :slight_smile:

It was a fun build and I’m very pleased with it.

HHH!! omg!!! ahah nice :smiley:

HHH!! omg!!! ahah nice :smiley:

As always

When it comes to the detail that people put into their projects you win time after time. I love it.

Awesome!!!

Awesome!!!

Congratulations on winning

Congratulations on winning 2nd place in the contest. That’s great!

Thank you ignoblegnomeI

Thank you ignoblegnome

I have already spent the money on some Panda Tinkerer Kits so I have lots of fun stuff to play with this winter :slight_smile: