Dinosaur skeletons, dinosaurs being made and controlling dinosaurs ...
I, Lucy Rogers, was invited to visit an animatronic dinosaur factory in China - the factory that supplies the dinosaurs for Blackgang Chine Theme Park on the Isle of Wight.
The factory is in the "technology" commercial area of the city, which, from the car seemed very like technology commercial areas in the UK. However, not many factories in the UK have a full size apatosaurus (brontosaurus) style dinosaur looming over the workers.
The dinosaur "skeletons" (frames) are welded and assembled on site, then the motors and cables are added:
The skeleton then is wrapped in foam - this starts with big blocks being cut to roughly the right size and shape: 
Highly skilled artists then carve the foam to look like skin / wrinkles / dinosaurs. Once the shape is right, what looks like ladies' tights is stuck to the foam with, probably, a latex glue.
And then, in what appears to be a magic process, a dinosaur appears, ready for some finishing touches. Like teeth.
Some of the dinosaurs could be ridden:
When I had finished playing in the workshop, I chatted with the engineers.
I described how we had hacked a dinosaur at Blackgang Chine (See #BlackgangPi 2) using a Raspberry Pi andhttp://grh.premierfarnell.com/pageredir.aspx?c=EU1&u=jsp/search/productListing.jsp?CMP=SOM-e14-Blog-LRo-RASPI-Dinos%26SKUS=2431427Node-RED - a visual method of programming the Pi.
After BlackgangPi 2, I made a dinosaur simulator, which I could use at my desk, rather than moving a 6 foot dinosaur around. I then could use this to make sure the Node-RED flows were correct - the LED's in the tail, body etc. correlating to an actual motor on a dinosaur.
James Macfarlane from Airborne Engineering designed and made a "Dino-8" board for me. This allows the Pi to control up to eight 6 Amp motors, running off anything between 12V and 36V. There are also two inputs, so I can use a switch or motion sensor to trigger the movement. The Dino-8 board was designed so I could just remove the ribbon cable from my model dinosaur and plug it straight into the Dino-8 board, without changing any of the Node-RED code. The dinosaur motors are attached directly to the Dino-8 outputs, and so I can directly control the dinosaur.
The prototype Dino-8 was based on the dinosaur we had hacked at Blackgang. This had four 6 Amp "windscreen wiper" style motors. These were run continuously in one direction as the movement was all connected via cams - the motors did not need to be reversed.
However, the Chinese engineer presented us with a motor for a big dinosaur - 21.4 Amps! He also wanted variable control on the motor speed, reversible, and many sound tracks.
I knew Node-RED could cope with multiple sound tracks - and managed to demonstrate this quite easily. James told us the Dino-8 could not do reversible, but the next design could without a problem. So it was just variable speed. I knew Dave CJ had managed to get PWM working on one pin on the Pi B+ - the question was, could it be done on more? Over night in China, (and during the day in the UK) Dave and Andy Stanford-Clark set to work. By the time I woke up, they had a working system - AND fool proof instructions for me to follow. These guys rock!
I started with Andy's "Traffic Lights" (LED's moulded with sugru with a connector that attaches straight onto the Raspberry PI GPIO pins.). Once I managed to change the brightness of the LED's, I attached the Dino-8 card with a small 12V motor. Variable speed was go!
We need to do some more work on the next Dino-board so we can control the bigger motors, but it looks like the Blackgang Chine dinosaurs will all be Raspberry Pi and Node-RED controlled soon.
While in China, I also had the opportunity to visit a fibreglass factory:
Just a comment on the food. I'm vegetarian, and I found the food and hospitality wonderful. Others ate a pig's brain.
I had an amazing time in China - I was made to feel very welcome everywhere I went, even after the karaoke session.
