# My Animatronic Raven in progress



## Neverhart (May 28, 2012)

Although I had zero electronics, animatronics, or rc modeling experience, I began building an animatronic raven this year, based off the designs by buckaneerbabe and raven's hollow cemetery. I suppose I'm fairly mechanically minded and have some coding experience, but learning how to get servos and linkages working was completely outside my knowledge - the prop tutorials have been great but there's a lot to fill in.

I got my feet wet with Arduino, and love the scripting language and could make it do what I wanted, but for the price point I decided to learn Picaxe, and try to figure out how to build the circuit to drive the raven. I wanted it to move in a semi-random, realistic fashion, make crowing sounds, and have red LED eyes.

So I began the long journey of buidling the thing, learning how to program it in Picaxe basic, and interface it all into a mobile unit. Then I discovered Halstaff's $15 Audio Servo Driver. That would let me simply feed the audio and get the beak to move on its own. I'm using the MDFLY mp3 board, which works quite well, especially for the price of $10!

For those keeping score: I'm using the GreenHead crow decoy from Cabella, and Hitec HS425-BB servos. 

View attachment 121276


So here's the mechanics thus far. The body pivot is a far cry from Raven's bearing-pivot, but it works fine. I'm pretty happy with the servo placement, the linkages all drive very smoothly, and the servos have no problem pushing and pulling. I've decided to run two circuits: the audio/servo driver running the sound and beak, and the body circuit, that randomly positions the bow, nod and shake servos. 

View attachment 121277


Here you can see the beak pivot is built from my favorite pivot: toggle bolt wings!

I've got video of the Picaxe routine, but haven't put it on YouTube yet. 

More details to come.


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## Saruman of Many Colours (Sep 8, 2010)

A very ambitious build. Coming along nicely, it appears.


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## Neverhart (May 28, 2012)

Thanks, Saruman! Yeah, I bit off a big chunk, but that's how I roll... and it seems I am in good company around here. (-: I'll have some updates in the next day or two.


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