This Spooky Doll was developed during a single-day internal hackathon at Parallax. A one-day project is often the reality for a Halloween animation. Spooky Doll demonstrates the Propeller Multicore Microcontroller nicely by combining WAV file audio playback, fading of two Adafruit NeoPixel rings and control of two servo motors – concurrently! A passive infrared PIR Sensor activates the doll to start when trick or treaters approach the area. The code was easily written in BlocklyProp and provides a simple example for far more complex animations.
The Spooky Doll project required about six hours to build and one to two for programming.
This tutorial provides a quick look at how this project was assembled and programmed. The applications for the WAV file playback and NeoPixel fading are useful for Christmas animations, user feedback, robotics and commercial products.
Hardware Required
This project used the following electronic components:
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(1) Propeller Activity Board WX (#32912)
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(1) SD Card (#32328)
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A speaker option:
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(1) Portable Mini Hamburger Speaker (#900-00018) which plugs into the Activity Board’s jack and provides high volume – OR –
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(1) Speaker (#900-00026). If you uuse this speaker you will need to drive it through a transistor such as a NPN SW HS 200MA 3904 For this schematic connection refer to the other example programs (the Art Mobile and Synthesizer projects).
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(2) Standard Servo (#900-00005)
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(1) PIR Sensor (#555-28027)
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(1) Pack of wires (#800-00016)
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(1) 200 mm Jumper Wires, MM 40-pc (#800-00066)
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(1) 200 mm Jumper Wires, FF 40-pc (800-00062)
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(2) NeoPixel Ring – 12 x 5050 RGB LED from Adafruit
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Spooky Doll of your choice!
