Chuck
09-05-2011, 05:15 PM
A friend of mine asked me to create a talking skull for his radio show called Atemi-Cast (http://www.atemicast.com). I had posted the completed talking skull that I hacked from a Gemmy talking skull in the showrrom forum. A couple people had asked for a tutorial.
This is basically my first tutorial so bear with me. I would say this is a skill level of 2. (Basic soldering skill required)
You will need a few things to make this skull
1. Cheap talking skull similar to this one.Talking Skull (http://www.costumeparty.com/images/shop/product_images/45467/64241-talking-skull-with-strobe-eyes.jpg)
2. Single chanel color organ kit. I got mine here. Single Channel Color Organ (http://www.electronickitsbychaneyelectronics.com/SINGLE-CHANNEL-COLOR-ORGAN-KIT/productinfo/C4738/)
3. Red LED's
4. 1/8 (3.5mm) Mono Jack. (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103453) These come in a 3 pack. (you will need 2 of them)
5. 5v 500ma wall wart. The smaller the better. It has to fit inside the skull.
6. Prop Eyes. I used this style. Merlins Easy Prop Eyes (http://www.hauntershangout.com/home/easyeyes.asp)
Start by building your color organ kit. DO NOT SOLDER THE 120V POWER ONTO THE BOARD YET. You will see why later. Now set it off to the side, we have to do some skull prep before we can install the kit.
Go ahead and open the skull by removing the 4 screws from the back. Now gut that thing of everything except for the jaw bracket, motor, and the leads going to the motor. The existing LED eyes just need to be pushed out from the outside of the skull to be removed.
On the back half of the skull you should see an area where the speaker was. It just so happens that this little alcove is the perfect size for the potentiometer on the organ kit. Place the poteniomater inside the alcove and see where the knob should poke through to the back of the skull. Now remove the potentiometer and drill a 1/4 inch hole there.
Do the same thing on the back of the skull for the input jack and speaker jack. See this image for placement.
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/Skullback.jpg
Note: When I first built the skull I was going to use a headphone splitter, so I placed the input jack in the middle. It wasn't until later that I thought it would be better to have mostly everything inside the skull. So I put another jack for speaker. That is why the speaker output is off center. Now back to our regulary scheduled program.
Remember when I said not to solder the 120v power onto the board yet. Here is why. Notice in the picture above how the white wire is coming out of the back of the skull. If you had soldered that wire onto the board, you will not be able to feed it through the skull. My skull had a hole that I just used to feed the wire through. Once fed, I soldered it to the board. Be sure to tie a knot in the wire from inside the skull, so that you don't accidentally pull the leads from the board later on.
This picture shows you how I wired the 2 jacks together and how the potentiometer fits in the alcove area. (like it was meant to go there)
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/Skull_inside_1.jpg
You will notice that the threads of the potentiometer and the jacks are not not long enough to go through and still have threads for the nut to go on. I solved this by breaking out the dremel and a flat top grinding bit. Like this one (http://www.toolup.com/images/Product/medium/Dremel-85422.jpg) Grind it just enough that you don't go completely though, but that you you can now thread the nuts on. These tend to melt the plastic and cover the hole you just drilled. If this happens, just drill it out again.
We are pretty much done with the back part of the skull for now.
On the front part of the skull we are going to do a little bit of wiring for the motor and LED eyes.
Since I didn't like the green LED's that were in the skull I went ahead and created new ones. You will need to drill the eye holes out on the skull a little bit so that the led's will slide completely through. I just used cross connect wire to make longer leads on my led's. Since I was using a 5v wall wart, I used a 150ohm resistor. The wall wart must fit inside the skull, so do your best to find a really small one. Now just wire the postive and negative of the LED's and motor to the 5v wall wart.
Here is a look at mine.
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/IMG_0872Custom.jpg
Now just plug the walwart into the outlet on the color organ kit and do your best to fit everything back into the skull without interfering with the jaw bracket and motor.
Put the skull back together and test out your hard work.
If everything works, take the eyes that you built from Merlin's tutorial and drill a 3/16 hole in the back of the eye. Your new leds should fit tightly in that hole.
Here is my finished product. (repainted of course)
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/IMG_0873Custom.jpg
And here is the video, You can adjust the jaws reaction by adjusting the potentiomater on the back. Very minor adjustments go a long way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp1Lw_eS-V4
This is basically my first tutorial so bear with me. I would say this is a skill level of 2. (Basic soldering skill required)
You will need a few things to make this skull
1. Cheap talking skull similar to this one.Talking Skull (http://www.costumeparty.com/images/shop/product_images/45467/64241-talking-skull-with-strobe-eyes.jpg)
2. Single chanel color organ kit. I got mine here. Single Channel Color Organ (http://www.electronickitsbychaneyelectronics.com/SINGLE-CHANNEL-COLOR-ORGAN-KIT/productinfo/C4738/)
3. Red LED's
4. 1/8 (3.5mm) Mono Jack. (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103453) These come in a 3 pack. (you will need 2 of them)
5. 5v 500ma wall wart. The smaller the better. It has to fit inside the skull.
6. Prop Eyes. I used this style. Merlins Easy Prop Eyes (http://www.hauntershangout.com/home/easyeyes.asp)
Start by building your color organ kit. DO NOT SOLDER THE 120V POWER ONTO THE BOARD YET. You will see why later. Now set it off to the side, we have to do some skull prep before we can install the kit.
Go ahead and open the skull by removing the 4 screws from the back. Now gut that thing of everything except for the jaw bracket, motor, and the leads going to the motor. The existing LED eyes just need to be pushed out from the outside of the skull to be removed.
On the back half of the skull you should see an area where the speaker was. It just so happens that this little alcove is the perfect size for the potentiometer on the organ kit. Place the poteniomater inside the alcove and see where the knob should poke through to the back of the skull. Now remove the potentiometer and drill a 1/4 inch hole there.
Do the same thing on the back of the skull for the input jack and speaker jack. See this image for placement.
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/Skullback.jpg
Note: When I first built the skull I was going to use a headphone splitter, so I placed the input jack in the middle. It wasn't until later that I thought it would be better to have mostly everything inside the skull. So I put another jack for speaker. That is why the speaker output is off center. Now back to our regulary scheduled program.
Remember when I said not to solder the 120v power onto the board yet. Here is why. Notice in the picture above how the white wire is coming out of the back of the skull. If you had soldered that wire onto the board, you will not be able to feed it through the skull. My skull had a hole that I just used to feed the wire through. Once fed, I soldered it to the board. Be sure to tie a knot in the wire from inside the skull, so that you don't accidentally pull the leads from the board later on.
This picture shows you how I wired the 2 jacks together and how the potentiometer fits in the alcove area. (like it was meant to go there)
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/Skull_inside_1.jpg
You will notice that the threads of the potentiometer and the jacks are not not long enough to go through and still have threads for the nut to go on. I solved this by breaking out the dremel and a flat top grinding bit. Like this one (http://www.toolup.com/images/Product/medium/Dremel-85422.jpg) Grind it just enough that you don't go completely though, but that you you can now thread the nuts on. These tend to melt the plastic and cover the hole you just drilled. If this happens, just drill it out again.
We are pretty much done with the back part of the skull for now.
On the front part of the skull we are going to do a little bit of wiring for the motor and LED eyes.
Since I didn't like the green LED's that were in the skull I went ahead and created new ones. You will need to drill the eye holes out on the skull a little bit so that the led's will slide completely through. I just used cross connect wire to make longer leads on my led's. Since I was using a 5v wall wart, I used a 150ohm resistor. The wall wart must fit inside the skull, so do your best to find a really small one. Now just wire the postive and negative of the LED's and motor to the 5v wall wart.
Here is a look at mine.
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/IMG_0872Custom.jpg
Now just plug the walwart into the outlet on the color organ kit and do your best to fit everything back into the skull without interfering with the jaw bracket and motor.
Put the skull back together and test out your hard work.
If everything works, take the eyes that you built from Merlin's tutorial and drill a 3/16 hole in the back of the eye. Your new leds should fit tightly in that hole.
Here is my finished product. (repainted of course)
http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff514/Charles_Gagliano/IMG_0873Custom.jpg
And here is the video, You can adjust the jaws reaction by adjusting the potentiomater on the back. Very minor adjustments go a long way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp1Lw_eS-V4