Magical Dragon Head Wizard Staff

We built this Dragon Head Wizard Staff for my girlfriend's 9 year old son, mostly out of parts we had lying around. It uses an accelerometer to "cast spells" based on the direction you shake the staff, or by stomping it down. It uses an ATMega 328 with the Arduino bootloader, and an Adafruit WaveShield for the sound output. The dragon head was hand carved out of lodgepole pine, and the staff was a piece of aspen. The plasma globe came from a kid's toy "Thunder Globe" we picked up at the county fair.

There are 8 runes along the length of the staff that light up when the wizard is about to cast a spell, and flash when the spell is being cast.

Please consider this more of a build log than a literal step-by-step guide, for this was a mostly last minute endeavor built in 4 days, and as such there are a number of things I would do differently if I were to make another.

 

Step 1: What we used

Materials:

For the Dragon Head:

2 Blocks of dry Lodgepole Pine
2 Acrylic spheres from a kaleidoscope
1 Small Speaker
2 Red LEDs
1 Thunder Globe plasma ball
Acrylic paint
Antiquing glaze

For the Staff:
Assorted small LEDs
Clear 5 Minute Epoxy

For the Main Electronics:
ATMega328 w/ Arduino Bootloader  (or any Arduino Compatible)
Adafruit WaveShield
3 axis Accelerometer
Amplifier Circuit taken from an old pair of computer speakers
2 9v batteries (chosen purely for size reasons, definitely not the best choice for powering a project of this nature)
3 NPN Transistors
1 6mm Tactile Switch
1 N-Channel MOSFET
Small wooden bowl
2 3" long 6-32 machine screws and nuts
Thick wooden dowel - 2" long max
Small piece 3/8" plywood

Comments

[poopheadboy00]

its so cool but i dont know where to get the stuff. can enter it in the contest

[toonmusic]

Thanks! :) The harder to find items (which is mostly the electronic components) have a link to where you can find them on the above instructable... The other items can often be found at your local hardware store or Radio Shack.

The trick to a project like this is to improvise with what you have available... and heck, that's half the fun, making something cool out of a box of parts, right? There really is no 'wrong' way to make something like this. :)

I actually entered this in last year's ('11) Halloween contest, and won 3rd place in the props category. Thanks for your interest!

[JungleMugsy]

It's amazing that you carved the head from a solid piece of wood! I might ask my friend to turn over his Thunder Globe to me, or allow me to liberate it...

[toonmusic]

Thank you! Well, technically it was two solid pieces of wood. ;) We had thought of a number of ways to incorporate the thunder globe into the staff, ultimately going with the dragon. We used that particular block of wood simply because it was what we had lying around at the time... Good luck!

[scoochmaroo]

Wow. Really impressive!

[toonmusic]

Thank you! I should mention that young Tom helped on this project by soldering up the Wave Shield by himself! Hopefully next year he can do even more!