# Gemmy Skull Network with MIDIFY



## Neverhart (May 28, 2012)

Gemmy animated skulls... my gateway drug into the world of animatronics! A couple years ago I found one in Walmart who's eyes lit up and moved back and forth, and who's jaw moved. Since then, I haven't been able to find one that had the eyes motorized, but AmericanSale.com still seems to have a number with lighted eyes and motorized jaw (as of August 2012.)

I stumbled onto the Division6 website, who advertised the MidifyYourSkull board, with which I could control the skull's eyes and jaw with MIDI. As a composer who uses MIDI all the time, this seemed ideal, so I started working on a solution. 

Division6 sells the Midify board by itself, but the contacts are very very tiny, so I'd recommend getting the MidifyYourSkull board, which breaks out all the connections to easy-to-solder connections, and makes it dead simple to connect the first two skulls. 

Last year, I hacked three of these Gemmies to have a Cat5 jack connection to the guts...

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Not the most dramatic of projects, and indeed the Gemmies didn't actually DO anything last year, except act as gruesome finials, sitting on top of my cemetery fenceposts. With enough time this year, I wanted to create a junction box to animate the three Gemmies, and eventually up to 6. 

Within a couple hours of receiving the MidifyYourSkull board, I had the first two skulls working with no problem. (Division6 offers the board with and without a voltage regulator - if you're using Gemmies, get the version WITHOUT.) The third skull was added with a relative minimum of fuss by soldering together a pretty simple circuit. If you're uncomfortable soldering you can get the add-on board from Division6, but it's pretty simple to make your own from their schematics. The third skull was added with minimal fuss...


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