Ghoulire
In
Progress
Most haunters at one point or another want to make a coffin with some undead
guy coming out of it. I guess it is my
turn. I have been buying parts and stuff
for a prop I call Ghoulire. Ghoulire will
be a half-torso undead guy wedge inside a half exposed coffin which was
purchased from Fright Theatre. (Meaning the coffin will be half way out of
the ground.) Ghoulire will be
animatronic. He will be my first
animatronic prop, besides the motor driven ones that I made But the title picture above shows you what he
looks like in a raw form.
The goal is simple. Ghoulire will be laying in his coffin with his head resting on its side. When all of a sudden his head will face forwards towards the crowd. Seconds later Ghoulire will lurch forwards to try to grab someone. A few seconds after that, Ghoulire will return back to laying in the coffin and then his head will return back to resting on its side. The action will then repeat. But on Halloween I will use motion to set him off.
My first project for Ghoulire was to build a coffin for him. The goal here was to make a half of a coffin so it would look like it was coming from out of the ground. I found a good friend from hauntforum, fick209 who is really good at making coffins or anything wood for that matter. I thank fick209 for all the help. The coffin would have been harder to make without her. The first thing I did was made a template out of cardboard and cut a piece of plywood to fit the shape. As you can see I angled the piece so it would look like it was coming out of the ground at an angle. For the coffin walls I cut 10 2x2 pieces and then nailed 1x6 boards on top. I used two of the 1x6 boards to line the side pieces. Then nailed it to the piece of plywood. I then used 1x2s as a type of wood stopper to help hold the walls in place. This is what it looked like afterwards.
Coffin Construction
Next thing I did was to bend cardboard and fill in the spaces between the wall and the wood stoppers. You will see next why I did this. The cardboard was hot glued in.
I then put fabric glue in the inside of the coffin and lined it was red fabric.
Construction of Ghoulire
This is the raw form of Ghoulire. I bought him from Fright Theatre. You will have to check them out. I really like the company; they will do what it takes to make you happy.
The first thing I did was coat the torso with latex and use a type of spider webbing that I also got from Fright Theatre, and place it in difference place on his body. I then painted him in a dark green color.
Ok, next photo is when I painted Ghoulire. After using a dark green paint for the entire body, I started to dry brush a greenish white to most of the body.(What is dry brushing?) You can do this by mixing white with a little bit of green. Then I mixed brown with some white and dry bushed on the bones only, and only in spots. I then just used a little bit of yellow as well, but only it small spot on his body. [Need a better tutorial on dry brushing?]
On this photo I have attached Ghoulire to the back of the coffin. The mechanism will allow him to lurch forward and back with no issues.
By looking at the photo below you can see how the motor is placed in the coffin. It is connected to a piece of aluminum stock. I created a slit in the middle of the stock by way of dremel so that the bolt could move freely up and down. When the motor goes into reverse, the bolt holding the two points together should go easily or it will get stuck. Then the motor and limit switches are added to inner coffin. You can see part of the motor’s wood frame by looking at Ghoulire’s left arm. The motor’s frame made from wood is “L” shapped. Also starting to add front wood pieces to coffin. The 1st of the two limit switches are located just above the motor to detect when Ghoulire will return back to the box. It is actually monitoring the aluminum arm connect to the motor for the return path. The 2nd which monitors Ghoulire’s main metal arm(located in back) for when Ghoulire is out of the box or in the lurch postion.
The
metal rod coming from the Metal Backing is connected to Ghoulire’s back. That is where the switch is monitoring ghoulire
coming out of the box. Switch turns on
when rod is all the way down.
Picture of the aluminum stock(shown to
the left) shows the slit that I dremeled to allow bolt to move freely when
Ghoulire is lurching and returning back to initial state.
This is a picture of Ghoulire with coffin painted and extra wood added to the front. I used solid coffee wood stain and brushed on some black paint for effect.
This is test video of
Ghoulire's Actions
Electronics
The electronics are very simple. Basically everything is controlled by a
prop-1 controller.(Program listed below)
The prop-1 will be connected to a home made relay system made from 12vdc
relays. Schematic listed below as
well. There are three inputs to the
prop-1.
The program starts by looking for a trigger. Pin7 is a trigger which will tell the prop-1 when to fire. Most of the time this will have a jumper to automatically trigger it but during Halloween I have a motion sensor which will be used to trigger it when someone walks by.
The program will
first turn on the light to illuminate Ghoulire.
Out1(Pin1) will turn on this circuit which is comprised of a 470 ohm
resister and an LED. This line is 12vdc.
I actually put the LED in a PVC cap and screwed it into the inside top
part of the coffin.
The next thing is Ghoulire’s head will turn forward. This is done by Pin0. The head is connected to a servo. The head starts off with his head to his right and then he will quickly turn his head forward.
After a few seconds ghoulire will lurch forward. This is done by way of a wiper-blade motor connected to a series of relays. Out2(pin2) will turn on, turning on relay1 and allowing the motor to go forward.(Relay layout below) The two relay’s function is to change polarity on the motor. So when relay1 is energized the motor is polarized in such a manner to allow the motor to go forward. When relay1 turns off and relay2 turns on, now the flow is reversed and so isn’t the motor.
Pin5 is going to be used as a trigger to stop the main motor. When ghoulire is lurching forward a switch(SW2) will trigger when he gets to the end of his lurch. Out2(pin2) will turn off and turning off realy1. A switch(SW2) will tell Out2(pin2) that it has reached the end. This tells the motor to stop. The prop-1 will wait for a few seconds and then the motor will go into reverse. This is done by Out3(Pin3) going high and turning Relay2 on. This makes the motor go in reverse. Allowing Ghoulire to sit back into the coffin.
Since we needed to know when Ghoulire is all the way forward, we also need another switch(SW1) to indicate when he is back in the coffin, so we can stop the motor again. Pin6 is another trigger. Its purpose, like Pin5 is to stop the motor when it gets to the end of its cycle. So when ghoulire returns back into the coffin, it will trigger the switch(SW1) and hence the prop-1 will shut off the motor. That means Out3(Pin3) goes low and relay2 turns off. This puts a ground on both sides of the motor and forcing it to stop.
Almost done! Now the servo is told to move the head back to the initial position for Out1(Pin1). Then Out1(Pin1) will turn off, turning off the light to the coffin.
Schematic:
There are two separate power
supplies. One is a 5vdc 5amp supply and
the other comes from Prop-1 which is a 12vdc 1amp.
Ghoulire Program – Prop-1
' =========================================================================
'
' File......Ghoulire.txt
' Purpose...To operate my Ghoulire project
' Author....John/Mark Sloat
' E-mail....
' Started...4/21/2010
' Updated...4/21/2010
'
' {$STAMP BS1}
' {$PBASIC 1.0}
'
' =========================================================================
' -----[ Program Description ]---------------------------------------------
' -----[ Revision History ]------------------------------------------------
' -----[ I/O Definitions ]-------------------------------------------------
SYMBOL Trigger = PIN7 ' SETUP = DN Used for outside trigger
SYMBOL Limit1 = PIN6 ' SETUP = DN Used to stop on rev
SYMBOL Limit2 = PIN5 ' ULN is pull-down Used to stop on forward
SYMBOL MotorR = PIN3 ' use OUT3/V+ Motor Reverse
SYMBOL MotorF = PIN2 ' use OUT2/V+ Motor Forward
SYMBOL LED = PIN1 ' use OUT1/V+ Instead Casket Light
SYMBOL Servo = 0 ' use P0 Servo for head
' -----[ Constants ]-------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOL IsOn = 1 ' for active-high in/out
SYMBOL IsOff = 0
' -----[ Variables ]-------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOL timer = B2
SYMBOL pos = B3 ' servo position, 60 to 240
SYMBOL delay = W5
' -----[ Initialization ]--------------------------------------------------
Reset:
PINS = %00000000 ' clear all outputs
DIRS = %00001111 ' make P0-P3 outputs
pos = 60 ' or 240 - depends on side
delay = 60000 ' one minute
GOSUB Servo_Pause
' -----[ Program Code ]----------------------------------------------------
timer = 0 ' reset timer
Check_Trigger:
PULSOUT Servo, pos ' refresh servo
PAUSE 17
timer = timer + 20 * Trigger ' update timer
IF timer < 100 THEN Check_Trigger ' wait for 0.1 sec input
LED = IsOn ' light it
delay = 5000 ' hold 5 secs
GOSUB Servo_Pause
pos = 150 ' center head
delay = 5000 ' hold 5 secs
GOSUB Servo_Pause
Lunge:
GOSUB Motor_Forward
delay = 50
GOSUB Servo_Pause
IF Limit2 = IsOff THEN Lunge
GOSUB Motor_Stop
delay = 10000
GOSUB Servo_Pause ' hold body up 10s
Retract:
GOSUB Motor_Reverse
delay = 50
GOSUB Servo_Pause
IF Limit1 = IsOff THEN Retract
GOSUB Motor_Stop
GOTO Reset
' -----[ Subroutines ]-----------------------------------------------------
' Replacement for PAUSE -- holds servo at present position
' * put timing (milliseconds) into 'delay' before calling
Servo_Pause:
IF delay < 20 THEN SP_Exit
PULSOUT Servo, pos
PAUSE 17
delay = delay - 20
GOTO Servo_Pause
SP_Exit:
PAUSE delay
RETURN
' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Motor_Stop:
MotorF = IsOff
MotorR = IsOff
RETURN
' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Motor_Forward:
MotorF = IsOn
MotorR = IsOff
RETURN
' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Motor_Reverse:
MotorF = IsOff
MotorR = IsOn
RETURN
' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
' -----[ User Data ]-------------------------------------------------------
More information to follow.