Arduino servos and power burnout...

Wanting to complete my automata-based reading lamp, but having had a lot of servo burnouts, I am trying to prevent the servo getting any power in between position changes. This should greatly reduce the risk of heating.
struggling with the circuit.

If I us digital pin outputs, an output voltage can easily be turned to HIGH (5V) or LOW (0V), but only seems to work with no servos attached. When they are attached the voltage is only 2.5V.

not sure what I'm doing wrong

valPot1 = analogRead(potPin1);            // reads the value of the potentiometer (value between 0 and 1023)
  if ((valPot1 <= midLow)or (valPot1>= midHigh)) {
     digitalWrite (PowerPin,HIGH); //turn on power to servos briefly only at point of writing to allow movement;
     digitalWrite (ledPinJoystick,HIGH);
    // potActive1=true;
    valPot1 = map(valPot1, 150, 900, 0, 179);     // scale it to use it with the servo (value between 0 and 180)
 
    myservo.write(valPot1);                  // sets the servo position according to the scaled value
 
    delay(delay_val);
 digitalWrite (PowerPin,LOW); //turn off power to servos again once moved to reduce heating effect;  
  }
  else {
    digitalWrite (ledPinJoystick,LOW); // signal that value is in mid-range dead-spot - used to turn off LED that indicates joystick activity;
    digitalWrite (PowerPin,LOW); //turn off power to servos when inactive;
  }

Christmas crackers...

Christmas crackers...
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Why, Christmas crackers can be good! Look what the trinket gift was in my cracker this year. By chance, exactly the pair of 1000V safe, high tensile alloy long-nose pliers I need to bend and sculpt wire etc. into shapes. Thanks Santa!

Making pantomime costume head - completed vulture head

The finished vulture head



Shown below is the original mask with the papier mache casing removed. The cling film barrier layer can be seen. This stops the PVA sticking to the underlying model.

The two halves are removed by cutting in half symetrically - lengthwise along the centre of the head, from front to back.These were later stuck back together with reinforced packing tape along the join, which had a strip layer applied over it to hide the join.

After painting and detailing with marker pen the finished head was varnished with 3 layers of flooring varnish.

Vulture head - pantomime costume

Vulture head - pantomime costume
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Head for a pantomime goose costume - part 2

Beak, shown against the rough sketch design. 








Goose sketches to help fix the design in the brain.

Constructing the framework for the skull of the head using withies (green willow sticks)







Building up the outer shape of the head by applying cardboard contouring

Cardboard head contours almost finished

Papier mache applied over cardboard contouring.









Complete head fully covered in papier mache outer layer.

Crow head model

Crow head - shaped chicken wire with xmas-decoration baubles for eyes, skinned with silver gaffer tape
Positive model to be used as a forma over which to apply papier mâché.
November 2011

Head for a pantomime goose costume - part 1

Agreed to make some costumes for pantomime.
Trying to make several bird heads, starting with a goose. A quick while on Google images and I found some great goose shots. First thing is to copy out and draw them a few times. This helps fix the shapes in the brain.





Once the picture is in the head, drew a quick final rough largish sketch to work from.The beak is the most important piece, as it is the defining shape of the bird head (birds' heads are pretty much all the same shape, except for the beak)





 To create the beak, used some soft builder's mineral insulation. This is much the same as Oasis, the green stuff used in flower arranging 

Started by roughing out the block in outline form







With a carving knife (my trusty 12" ham slicer), sliced out the detail of the beak shape.






Once shaped, a bit of light sanding got rid of the visible cut marks from the knife blade







With final details carved and finished - ta da - one beak, shown against the rough sketch design. 

Head needs a controller

The remote control automata reading lamp head needs a suitably daft controller.
It uses a playstation 2 analog joystick as the input device,

but this needs something more anatomical to skin it with. It has been suggested a hand would be rather ironically appropriate. It should look like this, but match the MDF finish of the head

image from wpclipart.com

Arduino workshop

Have recently been in Atlanta at a great workshop run museum multimedia techies.
Here we hacked together 4 arduiono projects in about 3 hours

A prototype theramin. the tone rate changed, but didn't quite get the pitch to work

A light show controlled by changes in ambient light

Slide the glass game using proximity detectors

There was also a Flash animated fish in a Flash fishtank controlled by proximity detectors