Halloween 2009!

Okay. Here we go with Halloween 2009! Despite the many things that make my life so busy and interesting, such as getting MARRIED this fall and my new wife starting a business, I'm am still going to try to pull together a great Halloween display.

Fortunately, I have a bit of a head start because we hosted a Pirate Party about a month ago and many of the props I made for it are going to be featured in the Halloween display.

I wanted to come up with something a bit different this year and settled on a Pirate theme. But...lots of people have done that. Hmmm. How to make it different? Aha! I have it. It'll be UNDERWATER. Yes, that's it. A sunken ship at the bottom of the sea and a coral reef with animatronics.

The coral reef will (hopefully) look like this with these clam characters.  If I get time, I'll make the opening treasure chest and a separate rock with "Murray Eel" in it.

The ship's wheel and skeleton will do nicely as the centerpiece of the sunken ship. Ive already made a pretty convincing anchor. And I can create a coral reef in the foreground with a talking skull and little talking clams.

I've purchased an SSC-32 servo controller online and I'm just starting to learn about controlling servos with a computer. There's a cool program called VSA that allows you to control the motion of many servos and sync them to sound.

So here goes. Stay tuned as I try to pull this together in two short months.