# Arduino Talking Skeleton



## samseide (Jun 1, 2010)

Hey guys! My wife won the 1000th facebook friend contest, and I've been trolling around this board for months now and hadn't worked up the courage to poke my head out of the garage to contribute anything here, so I thought I should say hi and put out a link to a how to on my skeleton I built last year as my first halloween prop. I have the bug now bad and have a whole lineup of things I want to get accomplished before the haunt year ends. Anyways, this is an instructable for a talking halloween skeleton that uses and Arduino microcontroller and a servo to make the mouth move. I also added some red led lights to the head that come on when he starts talking. There's lots of documentation, photos, and video in the instructable should you want to build your own. 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Talking-Arduino-Halloween-Skeleton/?ALLSTEPS


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Welcome to the Forum and congrats to your wife!


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## samseide (Jun 1, 2010)

Thanks! I'm hoping that if I start posting it'll keep me motivated to actually get projects completed. haha!


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## shar (Jun 19, 2010)

What a great prop!! I am sure you are going to be banging away in the garage right up until the 30th of October now!! Congratulations again on the win, can't wait to see the prizes!


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## samseide (Jun 1, 2010)

I'll be sure to post some photos of the wife and I opening up our treasure chest when it comes in the mail.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

Very cool skelly, samseide! I found your instructable a while back while googling for Halloween projects - looks neat! I have an arduino to play with someday - for now I'm having too much fun with Picaxe chips.

Congrats to your wife for winning the Facebook contest, and welcome to HF!


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

Oops! Duplicate post.


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## Joiseygal (Sep 3, 2008)

Hey Sam! Nice job on the skeleton! Looking forward to more props that you make. LOL..oh and your friend Zack Scott is really funny! I just got done watching a few of his videos.


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## tot13 (Jul 25, 2007)

Welcome, Sam. Thank you for linking to your how-to. Of course, like everyone else, I would love to have something like this for my haunt. Electronics aren't really my thing, but I seem to be able to follow your instructions. Not including the cloak in your parts list/price break-down, this looks like about a $100 project. Is that accurate or were there any significant costs added later?


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## samseide (Jun 1, 2010)

no additional costs then what you see in the video. Well...I did burn out a servo trying to figure out how to use it with the arduino but now that I have it hooked up correctly it works perfect, so I wouldn't count that as a cost to build the project more like a cost of gaining the learning experience. haha.

Yes Zack's vid's are really funny. If you haven't watched his spider videos you should really check them out. http://www.youtube.com/zackscott

Thanks for all the replies!


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## Zombie-F (Apr 12, 2004)

samseide said:


> Thanks! I'm hoping that if I start posting it'll keep me motivated to actually get projects completed. haha!


I say that every year! 

What always gets me going is Make and Takes. If you have a group in your area, definitely check one out as it really gets the creative juices flowing. 

Great job on the skull. It's cool to see someone use something other than a basic stamp/prop-1.


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