Hi guys,
I decided that I would post about my project. I'm making a replica of the Hippie Crane from America Sings. The mech will be mostly based off of the original but I have some changes. First off, the character was servo hydraulic, and I dont have the money or resources to run hydraulics in my house. So I am using pneumatics. The thing about pneumatics is its hard to achieve precise positioning of the actuators without spending $15,000 building the character. So I've designed a servo valve that I am hoping will be reliable enough for this project, otherwise I will just use digital pneumatics instead of analog.
Hippie Crane Movements:
1-Body lift
2-Body Sway
3-right hand
4-guitar raise
5-neck bend up/down
6-neck bend left/right
7-neck twist
8-head tilt forward/back
9-head tilt left/right
10-mouth
The controller I am using is of my own design and software. I have made software that plays audio and records the position of a potentiometer every milisecond for each individual movement, or combinations of movements. Once all the movements are programmed I can play it back as many times as I want and it will do the exact same movements every time. I do this by sending between 16 and 32 ASCII characters through a serial port which get converted to a value between 0 and 255 and mapped to the correct movement channel. I hope to get started on the framework soon and I will post pictures!
(I think I meant to post this in imagineering)
I decided that I would post about my project. I'm making a replica of the Hippie Crane from America Sings. The mech will be mostly based off of the original but I have some changes. First off, the character was servo hydraulic, and I dont have the money or resources to run hydraulics in my house. So I am using pneumatics. The thing about pneumatics is its hard to achieve precise positioning of the actuators without spending $15,000 building the character. So I've designed a servo valve that I am hoping will be reliable enough for this project, otherwise I will just use digital pneumatics instead of analog.
Hippie Crane Movements:
1-Body lift
2-Body Sway
3-right hand
4-guitar raise
5-neck bend up/down
6-neck bend left/right
7-neck twist
8-head tilt forward/back
9-head tilt left/right
10-mouth
The controller I am using is of my own design and software. I have made software that plays audio and records the position of a potentiometer every milisecond for each individual movement, or combinations of movements. Once all the movements are programmed I can play it back as many times as I want and it will do the exact same movements every time. I do this by sending between 16 and 32 ASCII characters through a serial port which get converted to a value between 0 and 255 and mapped to the correct movement channel. I hope to get started on the framework soon and I will post pictures!
(I think I meant to post this in imagineering)
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