Doing a small show with 2 talking skulls and lights with the HC-8+

[jukingeo]

Hello All,

While I am set on my projects for this year, I am thinking ahead for next year.   One of the things I do is a Singing Pumpkin display that is comprised of 7 pumpkins and 4 channels of lighting control that I have running through Vixen and a Renard controller that is connected to a PC.

Now what I would like to do is add two animated skulls that 'sing' with the pumpkins for next year.  Since I am new to the whole singing skulls 'thing',  I am not going to bother with eye movements.   The plan would be to have two skeleton busts and the skulls would rotate left right, move up and down, and the jaw would move to the music.   Thus with two skulls that would be 6 servos in all.

After doing some reading on my own here, I realized that the only controller that will possibly do this task is the HC-8+.  Thus going with this controller could the above scenario be done?

I am curious to how this would work with a computer running Vixen AND if there is a way to run this without a computer.   Thus the scenario would require 12 (120v) channels total for the pumpkins and general lighting plus the 6 servos.  I do have a 16 channel Renard controller that is currently running the 12 channels and the servos could run off the HC-8+.

Would I need to enter the world of Spin to do the above or will my knowledge of Vixen and Renard controllers be enough?

I am hoping that something could be accomplished possibly without a computer as I could put together a nice small animated show.   Given what I been hearing/reading about the HC-8+ it seems like it is one heck of a powerful controller.

I AM going to learn Spin for sure.  When I ordered my AP-16+ from Parallax (as you were out of stock) I did order a Propeller Demo Board from them as well.  So I am looking forward to learning to program the Propeller once the holidays are over.

Thank You,

Geo

[JonnyMac]

We've demonstrated in this forum that you can use Vixen to create a show, then export it as binary data (near feature KC created at our request), then play it from an SD card. If you want to use two HC-8+s then you'll slave the 2nd to the 1st using the RS-485 port.