This week, Queenie and I started prototyping our project: a spooky halloween portrait that will creepily reach for you when you get closer. We met up on the floor with no real materials except for an extra pillowcase I had lying around, and so we had to use what we could scrounge up.

We cut the pillowcase into one layer, and found some cut pieces of cardboard that could stretch it between, acting as our “frame”. We also found a spare glove that we stuffed with paper to make a 3D hand model. Then, with some masking tape and ingenuity, we put the entire thing together.

The cardboard frame we had repurposed, with the shadow of the hand visible.

Our hand propped up and flush against the fabric, attached to two servo motors.

The next step was to program the motion of our motors. We decided to use both our servo motors to program a simple action— turning the hand forward slightly. It was tricky because the servos were flipped, and so one servo technically had to move in the opposite direction of the other. We made sure the servos moved in sync first, and then taped them to our piece of cardboard to see what the motion looked like. We played around with the total angle, speed, and axis position to make sure it had the effect we wanted to, and in the end I think we got really close to what we want.

FullSizeRender.mov

FullSizeRender.MOV

Here’s our code for this motion:

#include "Servo.h"

Servo servoMotor1;
Servo servoMotor2;
int currDegree1;
int currDegree2;
int minDegree = 65;

void setup() {
  servoMotor1.attach(9);
  servoMotor2.attach(8);
  currDegree1 = 90;
  currDegree2 = 90;
  servoMotor1.write(currDegree1);
  servoMotor2.write(currDegree2);
}

void loop() {
  if (currDegree1 > minDegree){
    currDegree1--;
    currDegree2++;
    delay(70);
  }
  else{
    delay(3000);
    servoMotor1.write(90);
    servoMotor2.write(90);
    delay(1000);
  }
}

Finally, we divvied up the work we wanted to get done for our next meeting. Our first priority was to get our final materials— Queenie would laser print a real frame, and I would find black poster board to act as a background and a creepy hand for our final prop. We also have a few more technical tasks to accomplish— we need to get our Distance Sensor working, as well as light up some creepy LED lights. Tune in next week as we work towards the final iteration of our project!