Very nice! I recently went to see Evil Dead the Musical, and i'm working on an animatronic moose head / google assistant (although maybe alexa or cortana, still undecided). So this would be extra cool to drive it!

I'm a software developer by day (normally windows C#), but have done projects both professionally + personally in python on raspberry pis, and have a bit of linux experience. So the beagle bone would fit in nicely!

would be awesome to see that one. Do you have plan on handling the mooses antlers, they might pose a challenge in weight to be handled by servos or other motors?

would be awesome to see that one. Do you have plan on handling the mooses antlers, they might pose a challenge in weight to be handled by servos or other motors?

I posted the start of it here

Hey Moogle - an animatronic moose assistant

I should have the moose head tomorrow, so I'll see how heavy the horns are. I think the whole moose weighs 7lbs if I recall from shipping weight. I'm probably going to start off with the mouth movement as that seems like the most critical part, and one that I can work on before my robotic arm arrives with a separate servo if need be as prototype

So there is a challenge with the moose puppet now that I have it. It is real moose head size, which is great, but its purposefully overstuffed so that it holds strongly onto your arm when you go to move the mouth. So to give it good animatronics for motion, i'll have to open it up, remove all the stuffing (or most) and create some sort of flexible internal skeleton to allow the whole head to move. I may take that as a "phase 2" item, and just concentrate on the mouth movement syncing with the spoken google assistant response.

Vision would be fun to work in along with an AI. having him recognize people, and track their most frequent requests, and asking them if they want to "check the sunset time" or "when is high tide" or whatever when they walk past would be interesting.