New Talking Head

[Bill819]

As was mentioned a year or so ago there is a company called Gemmy which make animatronic manakins. At that time people were talking about an animated snowman. Well a visit to Gemmy's web page shows that they make all kinds of these creatures. The biggest problem is that they don't sell to the public but I did find some for sale on Ebay. I bought a 6' tall skelleton for $69. He talks, sings, moves his head from side to side and dances, well sort of. What I plan to do is try to strip off the head and cover it with aluminum foil so that it looks like it is made of metal and use it on my robot so that it looks more like a robot. The robot has two brains, one to control the motions of the bot and the other is Hal so I can carry on normal conversations with it in the mean time.
I will let you all know just how well it works when I make the final modifactions.
Bill

[danbaltzell]

Very cool idea Bill.  I can't wait to see it. I forgot all about Gemmy's, and never thought about looking on ebay.

[Bill819]

Well Mr. Bones arrived last week and he is cool. He stands five feet tall, wiggles his hips as he sings songs. His eyes light up (red leds) and his head moves back and forth. He has two jacks on his base, one for a microphone and the other for a stereo connection.
When inputing through a microphone only his head and mouth move, no dancing and the same goes for the stereo connection.
I don't have time now or for the next couple of months as I am going to school full time til the end of the year but it looks like I might be able to adapt it completely to my robot base. I will first have to strengthen the base and find a bigger battery at the same time. When all is up and running I will post some new pictures.
I had priced some animatronic kits to duplicate the sound and mouth movements before and they were quite expensive so this was a real deal. For all of you who want to add some realizm to your Hals I say go out and look for one. It is one thing to listen to your PC talk to you but to hear the sound comming from a moving head is all to neat.
Bill

[les]

Just a note,

Check and make sure it has a Mic jack when you buy, not all of the products from Gemmy has it. I tried to get one at Wal-Mart and it was missing the Mic jack.

Good Luck!
Les