- Joined
- Oct 20, 2020
This is just sad. I grew up going to Showtime Pizza and remember thinking how awesome those robots were
I managed to hack my old Teddy Ruxpin with an Arduino, $10 in parts, a pirated copy of visual basic (for the user interface) and a hangover.... and I have more than two discrete settings for the eye and mouth. This kit was cutting edge technology.... back in the 60's (I think this is when Disney made the Tiki Room).
From a mechanical standpoint, this was antiquated technology in the 80's. Even Teddy Ruxpin's motor control was more advanced. It had two DC motors (one for the eyes and one for the mouth) and the position was reported back to the control board with a linear potentiometer that was geared off the mouth and eye mechanisms.Of all the crappy things he sells and overcharges for, this thing pisses me off the most. There's more advertising copy about it on his main web page (which looks like absolute shit on mobile, natch). He talks about selling this to kids and educational institutions as a learning tool.
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In terms of technology this is stone age level bullshit. The types of pneumatic valves used in animatronics are controlled by electrical current. They have two states, open when the current is applied and closed when it's off. Smaller or mobile animatronics use servos. All that matters is whether there's power or not.
Tone generators were necessary when the storage medium was analog and the controller had to listen on specific places on the physical tape to know when to send the current to each individual valve, but those days are long gone. No one needs to do that anymore. The audio and signals are digital now. All of that shit is now done in software with files that contain the audio and signals. All you need is the electronics part to communicate with the computer and send the current.
He's selling this antiquated piece of crap kit that is built on an outdated way of doing things that no longer applies. And he's selling it as an educational tool to help people learn animatronics for a thousand fucking dollars.
I managed to hack my old Teddy Ruxpin with an Arduino, $10 in parts, a pirated copy of visual basic (for the user interface) and a hangover.... and I have more than two discrete settings for the eye and mouth. This kit was cutting edge technology.... back in the 60's (I think this is when Disney made the Tiki Room).
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