Ikkalebob

Great idea with the ping pong ball, please post a picture when you're done ! I need to see the spider robot haha

There should be no problem soldering the cables so long as they are in the right positions. I'm not sure about the joystick you bought but usually things like that come with pin headers that you solder into the holes so you can plug things in more easily, if not its fine but you will have to solder the wires.

Sometimes the arduino takes around 20 seconds to get going and during that time the servos freeze, have you waited that long? Are you using the 5v pin or the 3v? It might be easier for me to help if you upload a photo of the wiring.Another thing to try is to see how the servos move without the plastic horns screwed in? Maybe the horns just need repositioning.

Okay, so each servo has a positive(5v) and negative(GND) connection (black/brown is negative, red is positive) as well as a yellow signal cable. The wiring diagram should show you which (yellow) data cables go to which pins in the arduino (for example the y axis goes to pin 9). The Potentiometer and joystick both have positive and negative inputs (On a potentiometer this is the outside 2 pins, either polarity, on a joystick it should be labelled). Then the X-axis signal cable from the joystick goes to pin A1, y goes to A0, and the eyelid open/close potentiometer goes to pin A2. As for the push switch, One pin goes to GND, the other pin goes to pin 10 on the arduino AND to 5V through a 220 Ohm resistor. I hope thats cleared up for you, looking back the diagram is a bit confusing, I'm goi...see more »Okay, so each servo has a positive(5v) and negative(GND) connection (black/brown is negative, red is positive) as well as a yellow signal cable. The wiring diagram should show you which (yellow) data cables go to which pins in the arduino (for example the y axis goes to pin 9). The Potentiometer and joystick both have positive and negative inputs (On a potentiometer this is the outside 2 pins, either polarity, on a joystick it should be labelled). Then the X-axis signal cable from the joystick goes to pin A1, y goes to A0, and the eyelid open/close potentiometer goes to pin A2. As for the push switch, One pin goes to GND, the other pin goes to pin 10 on the arduino AND to 5V through a 220 Ohm resistor. I hope thats cleared up for you, looking back the diagram is a bit confusing, I'm going to try and update it so look out for that if you're still having trouble.

Nice work, it should look great in the dark :) I'm going to look into an alternative for the U joint since it looks like the wait time isn't feasible for most people. I'm impatient too I just happened to have one lying around at the time haha.

I know you can get them off Amazon but it's for 5x the price unfortunately (at least the ones I've seen on Amazon UK). I think 5mm should be fine, you just might need to tighten the grub screw and it could be a bit fiddly.

That could work really well, let me know how that goes because a few people have said they'd rather not wait.

Just the standard wires you use with Arduinos, they use a Dupont connector. If you search jumper wire or Dupont wire on amazon or ebay you'll find them, or any electronics store should have them too.

Best of luck with it :)

I've added a few more pictures to step 3, I hope that clears up any confusion :)

Yeah that would be amazing, get it to follow people around the room somehow, please post a video if you do!

I'm fairly certain they're digital but I can't be sure, I've never actually thought about it haha! I think they're controlled in the same way though, at least for really low power applications like this so it shouldn't matter.

Thanks :)

Thanks, and yes I kind of wish I'd done it at Halloween haha

Great job, looks a lot more robust than mine!

Cheers, this is a really good idea!

Cheers, I've tried to publish the instructable at the same time as the new expansion comes out so there's no better time to play :D

Thanks :)

Much appreciated :)

Cheers!