Cheap Motion Activated Animatronic Cannon

[deciusx]

This is my go at an animatronic cannon. I bought a fake security camera for $6.00 on ebay and gutted out the electronics. It was nothing more than a motor and a small 1"x1" pc board. I just stuck all that stuff inside my custom plasma cannon which was made from a $10.00 "Sci-Fi" ray gun from toysrus and wired up a USB port for quick release access. The fake security camera was also motion activated, so I just stuck the sensor on the side.


Animatronic Predator Plasma Cannon Video

--Steve

 

[Oberon1981]

Very nice! Moving parts always take a suit to the next level, good work!

 

[crawjaw]

Brilliant. Toy shops are great sources for kit bashing. Servos and motors in some cheap toys can sometimes work as well as expensive standalones. Very ingenious build with very little expense.

 

[4505marcel]

Cool nice smooth acion aswell, good job

 

[Akisha]

That is really cool and looks spot on as well, its not even that noisey, fairley quiet! Good job!

 

[Bovine13]

Nice construction, smooth movement, and it looks great. Cheers man, nice work.

 

[predator666]

Well done, cannon design is nice too

 

[Mr Fett]

That's a pretty cool idea for how little money you spent building it.

 

[SithLord66]

Very good job. I was wondering what is the USB cable from the cannon connected to? I originaly had an idea of using the VK74A l X10 NINJA Robotic Pan 'n Tilt XCam2 Mount I purchased from fleabay. But after getting it, was just to slow so i went with servos instead.

 

[carlart]

Not bad. Looks like my arm on the Dan Bravo gun platform holds up the gun quite well. Aside from the barrel thickness needing to be beefed up a bit, I like the design of the cannon, I'm sure it didn't look exactly that way out of the box.

 

[deciusx]

Marvel Zombie, the USB cable is simply soldered to a battery pack holding the 3 AA's. I chose the security camera because the under powered motor is perfect for making the cannon move slow and steady.

Carl, my barrel is a piece of s**t paper towel cardboard tube! lol... I'm planning on replacing it with a nice thick PVC pipe. I want to put lighting inside, but I'm very specific to what kind I want, I just don't know how to achieve the look I want. I want to put a blue light slowly pulsating, but I'm having a builder's block on an inexpensive way to do it. Ideas?

 

[SithLord66]

Hey bud, "I want to put a blue light slowly pulsating, but I'm having a builder's block on an inexpensive way to do it. Ideas?" I know at Christmas we use some lights that have different lighting affects. One of the choices is of the slow pulsating light your talking about. You would just have to replace the bulbs with blue ones and maybe take the end out of a small flash light to give it the added glow. With Christmas almost here I bet you could find something like that. If you wanted a stronger glow using a flash light end piece works great. My flash light reflective end piece was a touch to small so I wrapped it in duck tape till it had the desired size. It fits nice and snugg now. The Hyperdyne labs speaker Predator noise changer came with led lights also that go off when the cannon noise is played. I got it after I did my cannon motion and lighting set up in the video I have up now. Anywho hope that helps ya with some idea's.

 

[Nisa KZ]

Awesome! ) Can I use your idea to build my own cannon?