As part of our Halloween "Harry Potter' theme this year, I wanted to make an animatronic Fawkes. Fawkes is one of my favorite characters from the Harry Potter series (and my costume is Dumbledore!)
The movement is based on two servo motors--one to turn the neck and one to open and close the beak. The servos are controlled by an Arduino board programmed so that the neck and beak move in a random order.
I got some great inspiration from this site http://www.socalhalloween.com/Project_Raven.html, although his animatronic raven has many more degrees of freedom than Fawkes does.
The movement is based on two servo motors--one to turn the neck and one to open and close the beak. The servos are controlled by an Arduino board programmed so that the neck and beak move in a random order.
I got some great inspiration from this site http://www.socalhalloween.com/Project_Raven.html, although his animatronic raven has many more degrees of freedom than Fawkes does.
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Signing UpStep 1: Materials
The bird:
The body is based on a plywood cutout bulked out with foam.
The legs are 3/8" diameter aluminum tubes.
The feet are sculpted from black Fimo polymer clay, and were sculpted in-place around the perch.
The neck is a 1/4 in diameter aluminum tube attached to the neck servo on one end and the head on the other.
The head is again, based on a plywood cutout bulked out with foam. The eyes are glass beads, the beak is sculpted from Fimo. The upper beak is fixed; the lower beak is attached to the beak servo.
The skin of the bird is thin batting covered with a cloth mesh wide enough to poke the quills of the feathers through. Feathers were hot glued to the mesh. A wide variety of feathers are available on-line or at fabric or crafts stores.
The perch:
The base and column of the perch is an old floor lamp. I cut the perch support from pine stock. The perch itself is a 1.5 in diameter dowel. I couldn't find any pre-made finials, so I turned the two finials and painted them gold.
The electronics: Two hobby servos: Hitec--a standard size for the neck movement, a micro servo for the beak. An Arduino Duemilenova microcontroller board controlled the two servos.
The body is based on a plywood cutout bulked out with foam.
The legs are 3/8" diameter aluminum tubes.
The feet are sculpted from black Fimo polymer clay, and were sculpted in-place around the perch.
The neck is a 1/4 in diameter aluminum tube attached to the neck servo on one end and the head on the other.
The head is again, based on a plywood cutout bulked out with foam. The eyes are glass beads, the beak is sculpted from Fimo. The upper beak is fixed; the lower beak is attached to the beak servo.
The skin of the bird is thin batting covered with a cloth mesh wide enough to poke the quills of the feathers through. Feathers were hot glued to the mesh. A wide variety of feathers are available on-line or at fabric or crafts stores.
The perch:
The base and column of the perch is an old floor lamp. I cut the perch support from pine stock. The perch itself is a 1.5 in diameter dowel. I couldn't find any pre-made finials, so I turned the two finials and painted them gold.
The electronics: Two hobby servos: Hitec--a standard size for the neck movement, a micro servo for the beak. An Arduino Duemilenova microcontroller board controlled the two servos.
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You should add motors to the wings so they extend upward, as if to take off or stretch his wings.