Midterm Project | Shaking Spider

For the midterm project, I was teamed up with Rraaziq Brown and we aimed to create a ‘spooktacualar’ scare device for an operator to control in potentially a haunted house environment.

I knew from the get-go that I wanted to create a skeleton-looking animal from inception. I started with a memory from my childhood where I played with wooden 3d puzzles a ton as a youngster. I had so many dinosaur models that it was very much so a known direction to take when looking into this project.

3D wooden t-rex puzzle

My initial idea when I read about the project assignment was to make a cat that would have either a motion sensor or ultrasonic distance sensor that would trigger a servo motor attached to the tail of the the skeletor cat to rotate upwards and trigger green LED eyes and an audio hiss. I spoke with Abi Múnoz and wanted to team up with her on the project before partners were setup. She gave me the idea to look into plastics as a medium for structuring the model. Great tip! By time we spoke, the list had been posted, so we went our separate ways with ideas.

Raaziq and I met up shortly after the list was sent out and we shared our ideas. We sought out to find dfx files of 3D puzzles online. The ones that were coming up for cats were not too great and Raaziq found a great spider that looked pretty spooky, so we agreed on making that model. The site he found charged for the template, so I went digging for some other options. I found the perfect solution for (FREE) on 3Axis and went to test out the file with cardboard.

The cardboard cutting process with the the laser cutter was fun yet frustrating as the cardboard that I chose was fairly flimsy in nature and made it difficult to put the spider together. The solution that I found was using glue to give it some structure and keep the pieces in place. Although, numbered, there were no instructions on putting the spider together, so I improvised and put together based on what seemed like it would fit. We decided that using an acrylic would yield a better outcome for the spider, so set out to cut and build the spider out using the laser cutter and rubber cement to keep it secure and held together in place. We had a few pieces that didn’t quite fit, but ended up being okay in the end.

In the planning stage we got stuck on a few code glitches and decided to adjust our plans of making the spider move to the trigger of a button and that quickly shifted to a potentiometer controlling a range of speed on a set of vibration motors. We decided to go with the disc vibration motors that were more versatile and lighter in weight to move the spider best. Initially, the goal was for the spider to be on the floor with a box controlling the variable of speed with a switch button to turn all the light on/off.

Through building out the spider we hit a few unfortunate snags with the motors breaking and the spider not moving in the ways in which we planned. One day in the shop while we were adding the components, someone asked if we were planning on hanging the spider from a wall and if the intention was to scare. From there, we fabricated a quick stand out of junk scrap wood from the shop and made the piece come together. Raaziq and I had also purchased a larger vibration motor from Tinkersphere and I fabricated that into the hanging spider in the box.

The **code used was a simple analog to digital direction that in turn changed the frequency of the vibration motor though input of the potentiometer dial. The range I chose was a little too close together to detect, but happy that it ended up working out in the end. Due to time restrictions, I forgave the button switch for the lights, and had the potentiometer range keep the lights on or off (with no range). (**code at bottom of page).

Raaziq made a web out of the black acrylic with sparkles and he affixed that to the ‘wall’ that we created. The final touches were to use UV sensitive luminescent paint to glow/pop with the UV LEDs that were chosen for this project. All and all, I’m proud of our collaboration and overall fabrication that came together. For the future, I’d be more inclined to use a sensor for a responded action of wiggling, making sounds, and/or flashing lights.

int analogInPin = A0;
int sensorValue = 0;
int outputValue = 0;
int uvEyeLED1 = 2;     // pin that the 1st eye uvLED is on
int uvEyeLED2 = 3; // pin that the 2nd eye uvLED is on
int uvUBLED1 = 4;
int uvUBLED2 = 5;
int uvUBLED3 = 6;
int uvUBLED4 = 7;
int transistorPin = 8;


void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(uvEyeLED1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(uvEyeLED2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(transistorPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
sensorValue = analogRead(analogInPin)/4;
outputValue = map(sensorValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255);
analogWrite(transistorPin, sensorValue);
if (sensorValue >= 255)
{
//example
digitalWrite(uvEyeLED1, LOW);
digitalWrite(uvEyeLED2, LOW);
digitalWrite(transistorPin, LOW);

}
else
{ digitalWrite(uvEyeLED1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(uvEyeLED2, HIGH);
digitalWrite(transistorPin, HIGH);
}
delay(10); }