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This animated "haunted" Ouija board was made as a Halloween prop. This was made with mainly junk materials from my garage, but if you have none of the parts you should be able to source them reasonably cheaply enough. You need handy-man skills, some electronic know-how, and be able to program a microcontroller or pic (or know someone who can do it for you!)
Update Alert
The board can now say messages sent to it via a serial device - step 12 covers the changes I made!
This is part build-log, part how to. I hope I give you enough info to inspire you to make something similar.
Here is a video of the completed board with the lid off:
And here is a video of the completed box I had ready for Halloween 2007:
New Video
This new clip shows the serial communications link working:
Update Alert
The board can now say messages sent to it via a serial device - step 12 covers the changes I made!
This is part build-log, part how to. I hope I give you enough info to inspire you to make something similar.
Here is a video of the completed board with the lid off:
And here is a video of the completed box I had ready for Halloween 2007:
New Video
This new clip shows the serial communications link working:
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Signing UpStep 1Stuff you will need
A Stepper motor, with gear box, pulleys and toothed belt - I had a set stripped from a dead cheap scanner. You could modify this project to use a braided steel wire or even string instead of the belt, it shouldn't be too hard.
Some wood to suit your design. I messed up when I built mine, and used some poorly finished pine and my not so great woodworking lead to nasty corner joints, which left me needing to veneer the wood with a thin plywood... so keep this in mind, and perhaps use some nice ply to start with, and skip needing to do the annoying veneer finish. Alternatively, you could use the oldest and most worn timber, for that 'ye olde' antique look. Heck, be creative and make it your project!
Something to drive the stepper motor (I'll provide a sample circuit and the microcontroller code) but if you already have something else, or know what you are doing, then knock yourself out, you'll figure it out from the steps I have outlined....
A microswitch for the home position sensor (I got mine out of an old printer)
A power supply (12v 400ma plugpack or 12v worth of batteries if you want it cordless)
Some hookup wire
5 minute epoxy
Items I used but you can substitute with something similar: piano wire, brass tubing, a strong magnet from a broken HDD, brass shim, copper shim, brass split pins, brass box corners, rubber o-rings, scrap aluminium angle stock, screws, small piece of self adhesive felt, hotglue.
Basic tools: Pliers, cutters, soldering iron
Some wood to suit your design. I messed up when I built mine, and used some poorly finished pine and my not so great woodworking lead to nasty corner joints, which left me needing to veneer the wood with a thin plywood... so keep this in mind, and perhaps use some nice ply to start with, and skip needing to do the annoying veneer finish. Alternatively, you could use the oldest and most worn timber, for that 'ye olde' antique look. Heck, be creative and make it your project!
Something to drive the stepper motor (I'll provide a sample circuit and the microcontroller code) but if you already have something else, or know what you are doing, then knock yourself out, you'll figure it out from the steps I have outlined....
A microswitch for the home position sensor (I got mine out of an old printer)
A power supply (12v 400ma plugpack or 12v worth of batteries if you want it cordless)
Some hookup wire
5 minute epoxy
Items I used but you can substitute with something similar: piano wire, brass tubing, a strong magnet from a broken HDD, brass shim, copper shim, brass split pins, brass box corners, rubber o-rings, scrap aluminium angle stock, screws, small piece of self adhesive felt, hotglue.
Basic tools: Pliers, cutters, soldering iron
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The pauses, the path the marker makes... very effective in showing that there's a ghost going to extraordinary effort to make that damn thing move! Must be super-freaky to experience!
One piece of 'authenticity' your device has built in is the inability to reach certain letters. Kinda like there's a ghost that can't really spell. Maybe you could put in a 'frustration' loop when it's supposed to hit an 'l' or 'm' or whatever? Something like an agitated motion going to the pentagram, then back to the regular spelling out of the rest of the letters?
Great work!
Blue skies
Roy
I like the way it is now, vaguely shuffling round--definitely enough to freak out a few idiots!
I wanted to make a transportable prop though, so making it into a desk would have not been very easy to to. For fun, a version could be made with much more powerful magnets and the base unit attached under any desk, but again I had to make do with the magnets I had at hand (broken chips of HDD magnets).
My plan was to make it look like a seperate piece of victorian furniture, but did make it deeper (chunkier) than it needed to be - it could easily be 1/2 the height ot less and still fit everything in.
Thanks for the comment!
then use a regular board. I would love to see that.
The message capability will be of more use for halloween games (spelling out clues) or a haunted house type of display/feature.
3 years on and I still am pretty happy with the project!
Cheers!
I will have a play with the software soon. For those interested, you can chat with alice here: http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1
Cheers