Life Sized Audioanimatronic Darth Vader that Fights Children

Because I'm an idiot... I interrupted my work on my 12" diameter flying R2-D2 robot / model rocket, and got inspired to build.....

A Life Sized, Audioanimatronic Darth Vader that Fights Children...



Of course, my wife was thrilled to come down to the basement, and see that my "obsession mess" had taken over another 1/4 of the basement... So, I'm scrambling to finish it before our multi-family Rocket Day in June, and before the divorce papers get drawn up...

I got the idea because I had a little dashboard Darth Vader toy that booms out a pretty decent quality James Earl Jones Darth quip every time it senses motion.... I took it apart, hooked up the speaker wires to some larger spare PC speakers I had, and WOW, it sounded great!

I had the skeleton whipped up in 2 hours, taped the PC speakers into the chest, taped the toy sound board on, taped a Darth mask and cape I had lying around, and voila, when you hit Darth, he says one of these quotes:

"You have learned much, young one"
"I find your lack of faith disturbing"
"You underestimate the POWER of the Dark Side"
"What is thy bidding, my master?"
"<heavy breathing>"

So, then of course I decided to make it more complicated, and have him actively "fight" with a moving arm and microprocessor brain...

Here are some features:

-Full sized (6' 7" tall)
-Skeleton made of 2" x 2" steel studs
-2 degree of motion arm, using two Buehler 12V automotive motors
-Shoulder pivots in, out
-Elbow pivots up, down
-"Brain" is an Arduino board
-Sound is from a toy Darth dashboard figure
-arm is 1" square box aluminum
-arm bearings are 4" Lee Valley Tools lazy susan bearings
-motor driver is a ULN2004 chip, with several ICs piggy back soldered to provide more current
-limit switches detect end of range of motion

The idea is that this will be a full "Jedi Training Center" display, with a small platform to keep kids contained at the right distance to fight Darth. His light saber will be padded with bubble wrap. His hand is mounted with flexible fiberglass kite stays, so that it has a lot of flex. That will prevent injuries, and should add more organic motion to his movements.

There will be a small pedestal with a Start / stop button, and power switch. A child picks up a second light saber, and pushes the start button. After 3-4 seconds, Darth's light saber lights up (along with sound), and he starts to swing his arm a back and forth in pseudo random patterns. Whenever the light saber detects an impact (either with the childs light saber, or with the side of his head), the motion will reverse. After X motions, Darth will stop fighting and his light saber will turn off, and he will sleep until the next press of the start button.

I'm just finishing up the wiring of the driver board, then I'll write a quick test program (I love the Arduiino!) and make sure that everything's working. Then, a full program, using a simple version of a finite state machine.

I have a better mask on order, along with some gloves. I have all his clothes, and material for a better cape, and I have the plans an materials for his armor...

Just need time to finish... this working 'till 2am every night thing is starting to get a bit old...