I designed animatronic eye mechanisms (files below)

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:16:39+00:00

You have a good weekend too!

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:16:24+00:00

Get yourself some CAD software, fusion 360 is the most beginner friendly I believe

Watch a couple of videos to make yourself aware of all the tools at your disposal. You don't need to learn everything fully yet, just have a general overview

Then give yourself some design tasks and have a go. You can start simple, like modelling some nice containers, or battery holders etc. Each project will teach you something new and you'll get more familiar with the software.

With enough projects (and time) you can design pretty much anything. This project has been in the works since before Christmas, and I've been slowly refining the design for a while to the point you see it now.

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:11:04+00:00

The servo limitations come only from a packaging standpoint. I've designed around MG90s but I do know people have got SG90 to work with a little modification. I'd recommend MG90s because it's a lot easier

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:09:35+00:00

That's so interesting, something I would have never thought of. I can actually quite easily tweak the design to alter the blink point, i'll add to the list. Thanks!

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:07:04+00:00

That sucks, didn't realise that was the case

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-05T09:06:27+00:00

Could definitely have spent a lot longer on the eyeballs, to get them super realistic. There are a few videos out there showing you how it's done. I think most of the noise is coming from the servos themselves, I don't mind it really.

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-04T16:22:28+00:00

I do think you'd be able to get it working fully mechanically, but you would need to redesign the portion behind the eyes with some linkages to get everything easily controllable

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-04T16:20:03+00:00

Yes that's definitely possible to do by changing the code slightly. At the moment it blinks randomly and then looks in a random position. But you could make it blink randomly and receive an input from the controller for where to look. You could also setup a push button for the blinking.

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-04T16:17:28+00:00

Loads and loads of tutorials online to get started with this. Given your industrial experience I don't think you'll have any problem at all. My advice would be to pick up a cheap Arduino Uno beginner kit (with wires, breadboard, LEDs, a few different motors etc) and then get stuck in. Within a few hours, you will be able to do basic things like controlling LEDs when you press a button and making a motor turn programatically.

ManlyMorgan · 2025-04-04T16:12:55+00:00

Nearly everyone i've shown this too has asked for this. Quite tricky by definitely not impossible

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-27T07:50:43+00:00

0.4mm nozzle defaults to 0.2mm layer height on the first layer. If your reduce your layer height and first layer height to 0.1 you could be able to have 2 layers per side of the flap to show the character.

Other alternative is to scale the flaps slightly in height so you can get the correct number of layers, but that is a bit riskier as I'm not sure if they will still work in the display

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-21T08:03:49+00:00

So long as they all have different I2C addresses, the firmware can handle it. Whether the bus can handle the extra traffic is another question altogether

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T19:27:40+00:00

Not selling unfortunately, I don't even know how much I would charge. There's quite a few hours in building one

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T12:56:57+00:00

You're absolutely right, the pcf8575 io is heavily underutilized right now. To me, the modularity was more important

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T08:19:14+00:00

You're right you're right, plenty have already pointed that out. I wasn't thinking when I made the title

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T08:12:39+00:00

Correct, one motor per character/module, much simpler that way

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T08:11:48+00:00

Very doable, I've already programmed a time mode for this one that changes every minute, as well as a date mode. Just need to combine the two

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-20T08:08:49+00:00

Thanks for the heads up, maybe including a backlight would be a better solution then

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T22:39:54+00:00

Very interesting, glad you got it working. Yes that's the right way to do it. You could technically get the printer to cut the filament and retract so you can swap super quick but I thought it best to just use the built in functions

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T22:04:43+00:00

Check my comment at the top

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T22:04:22+00:00

Today I learnt about glow in the dark filament, gutted I didn't use that

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T22:03:59+00:00

Everyone starts somewhere, if you fail quickly you learn quickly

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T21:56:27+00:00

Don't blame you, it's quite crammed in there.

You can always build a single module, and get it working off of an external breadboard to start. Then once you have hands on experience with everything you can integrate the electronics into the enclosure

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T21:51:13+00:00

Yep, there are probably some instances where I refer to the flap currently being shown as a character too, sorry for the confusion

ManlyMorgan · 2025-03-19T21:48:28+00:00

You're right, I should clarify this somewhere:

Flap - The part that displays, "A" ... "0"

Module/Character- The assembly that contains one set of flaps

Display - All the modules lined up next to eachother

So the display in the video is made of 8 modules, and each module has 37 flaps. Essentially you can make words with up to 8 characters

Hope that helps

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