Animatronic Rudolph

[Frank_Lo]

This was a project that I worked on to add to my display for last season
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbJyluI_JVw

[Scot Meyers]

Awesome job Frank. Welcome to Planet Christmas

[FandomFilms]

That's so cool. Would love to see the inside of it.

[stuart]

That is awesome, where are you going to use it?

[Randy G]

Great job Frank! And welcome to PC!

[HolidayMan007]

Thats great!

[Darlene Pino]

I love it. Can you give us more details? Like how you made it?

[Frank_Lo]

Thanks for all the kind words and I’m glad you enjoy it. It was a fun project to do. The hardest part was to find the reindeer. The first one I got I thought it was a plastic body covered in fur turned out to be Styrofoam and I didn’t realize it till after I bought all 8 servo motors and gear boxes. The only deer I was able to find that was close to the size I was looking for was a fiberglass one. The added weight of the fiberglass was something I have to take into account while trying to use the motors I have already bought and the head of this deer was smaller so I had to eliminate the eyes blinking. I wish I had taken some pictures along the way while making it. What I do while making any animated figure is once I have the figure is to cut it open. For the Deer I had cut the ears, tail head at the upper part of the neck and neck from the body off and also cut the lower jaw off. Then I cut out a section on top of his head to give me access to place the motors and linkages. Under his belly I did another cutout and hinged it for the electronics. For his nose I used a 1 watt red LED and cut off the fiberglass nose and used 2 layers of 1/8” red translucent plastic that I molded to match his nose. There are 2 speakers 1 in his mouth and the other in his belly. He is started up by one of 2 ways. He has a touch switch in the middle of his back and a IR sensor in his nose. If you “pet” him down his back the program starts or I use a tv remote to also get him to go. He could be programmed to play over and over or at any time of day.
To control the deer I used Brookshire R.A.P.U. and VSA software. The Remote Advanced Playback Unit (RAPU) is a small computer that is made for animation. The servo controller board used was a SSC-32 Servo controller which can handle up to 32 servo motors.
Once everything was built I took the sound clips from the Rudolph tv movie and tried to put them in an order that would sound good and flow as if he was talking to you. Then it was just a matter of programming him by trial and error to get what I wanted. What I like about this is that at anytime I can tweek his program or change it or add to it by just plugging my computer into his belly and uploading the new program.
He really is only part of what I really wanted to do and someday I hope to have a version on him that walks and interact with people.
I hope this answer some questions you might have. For this year if I can find the time I am planning on adding and Alvin and Chipmunks animatronic display and I will make sure to take pictures along the way as it is being built.

[jrbryant]

Frank... that is INCREDIBLE!!! Do you, by any chance, have more animated characters to show off?... pics/videos of your entire display?

[showtime]

Frank glad to see you!!! Rudolgh is way way cooooool!!!!!! Cant wait to see it in your display this year!!!!