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JOSH (JOking Skeleton Heads) |
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This is a rebuild of the Joking Skeleton Heads prop (JOSH). It's a pair of talking skeleton heads (Bucky's) that sit at the entrance to my haunt and tell really bad Halloween jokes. The previous version had too many parts, took too long to set up and wasn't very reliable. With this rebuild, the setup will consist of driving a stake in the ground, bolting the prop to the stake, plugging it in and pushing play on the MP3 player. It should take no more than 10 minutes to set up. Here are a few pictures of the new unit: |
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This
is the front of the unit. The Bucky skulls will be mounted to the black
uprights which contain the speakers. The box below contains the electronics
and will be painted to whatever theme I choose to go with (probably a circus
theme) |
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Here's
the rear showing the speakers and the hinged door over the electronics. I
intend for the unit to be somewhat weatherproof. |
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The electronics consist of a pair of 18 watt amplifiers
(far left and right), a pair of audio/servo
drivers (next to the amplifiers), a cheap ($10) MP3 player (center) and a
pair of power supplies. I found it necessary to use two power supplies
because of noise problems. The small board below the power supply on the
right is a voltage regulator to produce the 1.5 volts for the MP3 player. To
hook it to the MP3 player, I attached the + and - wires to small screws in
the ends of a 3/8" dowel cut to the same length as a
AAA battery and inserted into the battery compartment. The MP3 player was a
one-time special from Geeks.com. The amplifiers are a home
made version of this kit
and the speakers are from a pair of decent quality computer speakers. The
sound quality is very good with plenty of volume to be heard over crowd
noise. |
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last
update 11/2013 |
