Fail of the Week: 27 Face Jack-o’-Lantern
Sheer luck brings a Halloween themed project for this Fail of the Week post. [Stryker] wrote in to the tips line to share a link to what is an extremely awesome hack. He carved four three different faces on the sides of his pumpkin, then sliced the eyes, nose, and mouth into different sections. Couple this with an internal skeleton made of wood and PVC and he’s got himself a nice hack which lets trick-or-treaters spin the sections to select one of up to 27 different faces.
The sections do spin rather well and the finished project looks fantastic. So what is it that failed? We’ll cover that after the break.
Check out the support structure on the right. Did you already notice that each of the sections has a hobby servo motor attached to it? These were meant to mechanize the jack-o’-lantern. Each uses a belt to interface with the PVC fittings, and an Arduino is used to control the motors. [Stryker] shows this off in his video description. He says his “servo pulleys broke”. We assume this means either the plastic wheels themselves or the belts and hopefully not the motors. He plans to try again next year.
Can we help brain-storm an easy improvement? There was mention of gears and chain-drive. Is that the easiest way to salvage the concept and where should he source the gears and chains? Leave your helpful ideas in the comments section.
Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Wednesday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and sending us a link to the story – or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels.
Filed under: Hackaday Columns, Holiday Hacks
Sheer luck brings a Halloween themed project for this Fail of the Week post. [Stryker] wrote in to the tips line to share a link to what is an extremely awesome hack. He carved four three different faces on the sides of his pumpkin, then sliced the eyes, nose, and mouth into different sections. Couple this with an internal skeleton made of wood and PVC and he’s got himself a nice hack which lets trick-or-treaters spin the sections to select one of up to 27 different faces.
The sections do spin rather well and the finished project looks fantastic. So what is it that failed? We’ll cover that after the break.
Check out the support structure on the right. Did you already notice that each of the sections has a hobby servo motor attached to it? These were meant to mechanize the jack-o’-lantern. Each uses a belt to interface with the PVC fittings, and an Arduino is used to control the motors. [Stryker] shows this off in his video description. He says his “servo pulleys broke”. We assume this means either the plastic wheels themselves or the belts and hopefully not the motors. He plans to try again next year.
Can we help brain-storm an easy improvement? There was mention of gears and chain-drive. Is that the easiest way to salvage the concept and where should he source the gears and chains? Leave your helpful ideas in the comments section.
Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Wednesday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and sending us a link to the story – or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels.Filed under: Hackaday Columns, Holiday Hacks