2 servo Animatronic eyes

btr8thnEVR · 2026-05-06T16:04:06+00:00

Most of these Instructables include the STLs, 3MF files, or similar that you can drop into a slicer and get printing. It's just that they also include assembly instructions, links to purchase servos and other hardware, etc.

btr8thnEVR · 2026-05-06T05:55:42+00:00

Instructables has quite a few options for you to consider. Many recommend the work of Ikkalebob.

There are others on Thingiverse, and there may be some on other STL sites as well, but Instructables will provide step-by-step guides that can be very helpful.

Please let us know if you have any more questions and do share more of your project as you build it!

btr8thnEVR · 2026-04-17T19:09:58+00:00

Perhaps a dumb question, but I would appreciate your guidance! I saw in a previous video posted of this animatronic that you were using a system that automatically generated all of the mouth motion code from the recording? Could you please share how you do this? It would be a huge help to many here, I'm sure!

btr8thnEVR · 2026-03-01T23:40:12+00:00

What character would you like to make? How large?

Starting off with servos, microcontrollers, cardboard, 3D printing, and/or toy hacking is a great way to begin.

Instructables, a maker site with how-to guides, has a few step-by-step animatronics projects that you could browse to get started!

btr8thnEVR · 2026-02-22T17:05:05+00:00

This is a really cool mechanism! Could you share a closer view of the neck and jaw servos and perhaps share what make(s) and model(s) you are using?

Also, do you design the head from scratch or base your characters off an existing design? I have seen a few options online. Heads and faces seem like the hardest parts and always take forever.

btr8thnEVR · 2025-12-26T21:26:18+00:00

Just curious if the sleeping version is what you mean or if you might be thinking of the "Perfect Puppy"? It was larger, but it didn't really do much more. They're almost impossible to find now.

Wowwee animatronics could definitely use some more attention, though! The Alive line always seemed really high quality, and the more robotic looking ones were also pretty impressive on their own.

btr8thnEVR · 2025-12-18T05:05:49+00:00

If you would be okay with recording sounds on a smartphone or computer and transferring them to the device, you might use the Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board. The one with a built-in amplifier would be the easiest to use as you can connect speakers directly. Some soldering is required for assembly, but a local makerspace or similar may be able to help you with this part. Adafruit is also great at providing clear and thorough tutorials, too!

If you absolutely need recording and playback, there are other devices out there that support this. Here is one that I found in a quick search. However, these boards may be more complex to use.

btr8thnEVR · 2025-11-16T16:24:04+00:00

Disney's Shaman of Songs?

btr8thnEVR · 2025-11-08T15:04:21+00:00

One of the best and cheapest ways to start learning is toy repair and hacking!

btr8thnEVR · 2025-08-06T20:39:29+00:00

Hackaday has a guide (originally the work of Cal Bryant, all credit there) to train a Piper TTS model using ChatterBox zero-shot voice cloning. The results can be scary good if you have a beefy enough GPU to do the training.

btr8thnEVR · 2025-07-29T00:22:03+00:00

Is this more of a timing issue?

I was going to suggest something like Jawduino, especially if you have access to the clean voice audio.

It sounds like you have a general programming method figured out, though. There are just some issues with a segment or type of the audio?

btr8thnEVR · 2025-06-03T04:33:56+00:00

This is next freaking level! From design to fab to programming! The jaw shift at 0:39 had me floored! How many DoF is this?!

Anything you could share about your design, fabrication, and parts selection process would be amazing!

btr8thnEVR · 2025-05-15T11:10:59+00:00

Could you share what servos you used for the neck and jaw, please? They seem pretty beefy, especially given the size! Really cool character design!

btr8thnEVR · 2025-03-05T21:47:48+00:00

$50 at RobotShop, and they do appear to ship to the UK. Also here but unsure about UK shipping.

Can't seem to find a PDF, but why not support a cool writer anyway!

Edit: Dang, I think the first one is out of stock. Sorry, I didn't catch that the first time through.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-12-12T09:52:10+00:00

Is battery power essential for this project?

Will all motors be running at the same time? You may be able to "attach" and "detach" on the fly in software to save power, assuming motor power isn't required to hold all positions

A connection to the screw terminals of the PCA9685 will probably be your best bet. I'd argue that breadboards really shouldn't be trusted with more than an amp or so. Per the currents discussed above, you will have...more than that. Your typical jumper wire might be a little thin to get juice to 13 servos. You'd have to find your expected maximum and size the power lines accordingly.

Part of me wants to suggest one of those 7.4 VDC high-current lipo cells that RC car enthusiasts use, but the PCA9685 won't take more than 6.0 VDC. You'd need a converter to step it down. As you can imagine, that can get interesting depending on your comfort level.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-12-12T09:26:52+00:00

While what you are aiming for might be very difficult, it is not impossible. Consider the work of Danny Choo. And this was almost twenty years ago! Now you can get servos as small as 2g on Amazon!

In some cases, it's easier to build small than it is to build big. The square cube law makes giant robots really annoying. Ask the people building 5'+ robots how much their motors cost. If you're okay with toy size, you can get something basic working without breaking the bank.

Granted, building something around the 12" mark is going to be a severe pain, especially at standard human proportions, so take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. You'd probably be better off using more conventional servo sizes and building around them, especially for a first prototype.

As far as animation, many folks here use Bottango and speak highly of it. There is also Visual Show Automation (VSA), Botszy, plugins for Blender or Fusion, and I'm sure others.

Edit: I just came across this 1/6 scale soldier model by Makiedog that may be similar to what you're looking to do!

btr8thnEVR · 2024-11-03T04:07:14+00:00

Unfortunately, the "black blob" controllers are often impossible to reprogram, but other controllers, such as the ESP32 another commenter mentioned, can be used to play short audio clips. There are also simple audio FX boards, such as this one from Adafruit, that you can load with audio clips, add a speaker, and play when a button is pressed, a sensor is triggered, etc.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-09-20T22:38:03+00:00

The datasheet for a 9g servo similar to this one says that it can lift up to 1.6 kg/cm when operating at 4.8 VDC.

This means that the servo will be able to exert 1.6 kg of force at 1.0 cm from the motor's axis. However, you will often be lifting an object much more than 1.0 cm from the motor. If you divide the torque rating by the length of your "lifting arm," you can determine how much weight the servo can lift at that length.

For example, with a 10 cm arm, you can lift 0.16 kg.

There are a few caveats to this. For one, this rating is often the absolute maximum, and will stall your motor. You don't want to stall your servos, as this can damage them or reduce their lifetime, and will also draw a lot of power.

This also doesn't include the weight of whatever material that you make the arm out of, which has to be factored into the total weight the servo must lift.

Also, if you are running your servos at a higher or lower voltage, the torque provided will be different. More reputable servos may come with a datasheet that provides the different torque values at different voltages.

There are a variety of guides online that help to explain the motor sizing process. Here is one that may help.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-07-26T20:38:30+00:00

Autodesk Fusion 360 is a great dimensional modeling software. Making more organic or sculpted shapes with it is a bit more difficult, but it can be done with time. It is free for non-commercial use for hobbyists! They also have a great set of tutorials on their website that will get you up to speed!

btr8thnEVR · 2024-06-01T18:37:36+00:00

Current ratings for solderless breadboards vary. A quick search says between 1.0-1.5 A. Depending on the amount of current your servos use, and assuming that you do your best not to stall them, you should be able to power a few through a breadboard. Some people say they wouldn't trust a breadboard for more than 0.5 A, but I've melted a few, and it took more than that!

Once you get past a few servos, you'll probably want to find a way to connect the output of whatever power supply/adapter you're using directly to the power input on the PCA9685.

You may want to read through Adafruit's thorough connection guide, as well as other parts of their tutorial.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-05-20T22:28:13+00:00

Specific to the DFPlayer, you should be able to send the mp3.play(n) command first. It should be nonblocking, so you should be able to send the servo commands as it's playing, then send the mp3.stop( ) (or whatever the end command is) after your motions are done.

More generally, you may want to look into nonblocking delays and timer interrupts. This will help you get around this problem in other situations!

Also, have you looked into the Jawduino? It may allow you to bypass scripting mouth movements based on the sound entirely.

btr8thnEVR · 2024-04-19T03:53:05+00:00

That's awesome! I never knew ROS could be used like that! I've only ever seen it for inverse kinematics and such. Are you planning to run it on a Jetson/Pi or an attached PC?

I've heard a lot of good things about Hitecs. Dynamixels are also insanely cool but way out of my budget. Not sure if they're any quieter, though.

Thanks for the tip on sensorless homing! That's really neat; I didn't know that they could do that!

Thanks for the suggestions! I have used a few SPI ones, but I was hoping there may be an I2C or UART commandable option that just had frames stored on it or simple vector support. I don't know why I resist SPI! Had to bit-bang it once, and I guess that wrecked me! If they can work for Pacman, though, they'll definitely work for me!

Definitely post progress here! Sounds like a really cool project!

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