Welcome to Part 4 of the "Elvinator" project, where we're converting the WowWee Alive Elvis into "The Terminator!" In this small article, we’ll see what those boards are and what they are for. A lot has changed in this design since I started this project, but all is still well and some really great stuff is on its way. You can keep an eye on my project by using the quick links at the bottom of the page! After this article, things are going to get really fun, and difficult at the same time. So, let's take a look at one of the most important boards that we'll be using.
This first board is called the ELV-08. This board controls the eye and lip movements. It uses an Hbridge board for the motors. The pin outs are as follows:
- M1-Red Connector moves the eyes up and down
- M2-Orange Connector Moves Eyes Left and Right
- M3-Yellow Connector Moves Left Eye Lid (we will not be using this one)
- M4-Green Connector Moves the Right Eye Lid
- M8- Purple Connector Moves the lip Right and Left side
- J22-Power source 9v
- Pin1-red wire +9V
- Pin2 -Black/red Wire -Vss Ground
- J33- Main Interface connector
- pin1-eye up -brown wire
- pin2-eye down- red wire
- pin3-eye left-orange wire
- pin4-eye right-yellow wire
- pin5-left eye lid up-green wire ‘ not being used in our Elvinator
- pin6-left eye lid down-blue wire ‘ not being used in our Elvinator
- pin7-right eye lid up-purple wire
- pin8-right eye lid down-grey wire
- pin9-lip down-white wire
- pin 10-lip up-black wire
You can now see why this board is one of the most important boards, as it controls all of his facial movements; the exceptions are the jaw and eye brows, which are controlled via the ELV-07 board.
This ELV-07 board controls the eye brows, mouth, and left / right head movements.
Pin outs on this board are as follows:
- M11-white connector-controls L/R head movement
- M6-blue connector-controls eye brows
- M1-Grey connector controls jaw movement
- J33- power connector
- pin1-red +
- Pin2-GND -
- J12- main controller plug
- pin1-red-neck right
- pin2-yellow-neck left
- pin3-green-jaw down
- pin4-blue-jaw up
- pin5-purple-eye brow down
- pin6-black-eye brow up
All motors in the Elvis have either a 5k or 10k ohm variable resistor. The Yellow VR’s are 10K and the Black VR’s are 5K. We will be using these to control the location of every motor in the Elvinator. With this, we’ll convert the analog voltage into a digital signal so the Basic stamps can recognize it. A new board will be made for this purpose, even though the Elvis has an A/D board on it already, the ELV-09 board. That board will be discarded for another project in the future.
The following picture will show you one circuit for controlling the VR. When we build a board, each VR will have a circuit that looks like this connected to it. The value of C is 1.0uF 35WVDC Tantalum capacitor.
Next in line is the power board: the ELV-04.
This is a pretty heavy duty power supply board - which is a must, given the multitude of all the motors that it runs. Here are the pin outs:
- J17 - power from the transformer and a detect line for battery power
- red- 9v in
- black- ground
- brown- battery +V
- BAT1- battery connector
- pin1- ground
- pin2- 9v from battery
- J10- powers audio board
- red wire 1.5v
- black wire- ground
- J14- powers main cpu
- red- 6v out
- orange-VR power -8V’ will not be using this line
- black- ground
- black- ground
- brown- battery dectect +9V if batteries are not in and power plug in
- J49- powers ELV-08 board +9V
- J75- powers ELV-09 VR board +9V’ we will use this for our own VR board
- J15- powers ELV-06 board +9V
- SW1 On/Off switch
So far, we have seen the boards that control all facial movements and its power supply board. The ELV-01, which is the main CPU, is not needed either; all programming will be done with Basic stamps and a custom control board, which we will visit later.
At this time. I would like you to see the audio amp for the Elvis - although I’m unsure at this stage of the project whether or not I will actually be using it.
This is the ELV-05 board; there's not too much to this board except the power in plug and audio out plugs. This board also allows for a microphone to be plugged into it as well. As you can see, I’m not too thrilled about the functionality of this board. I may swap it out when we get to the recording part of the project. There are only three boards left that we will use from the Elvis, and two of them are the same board: the ELV-13. There's one of these boards for the left IR/RX controls in the jacket, and one for the right one.
As you can see, there are only 4 wires coming out of the board, one for power, one for gnd, one for RX, and one for TX to the IR LED. We will use these boards just like the Elvis does: to detect someone or something relative to the left, center, or right of the bust.
The last board that we’ll use is the ELV-06 board: this is another Hbridge board for the neck movements.
As I said, this would be a short article but the next one I know you’ll love: making the facial movements! This will entail creating the controller board and lots of programming goodness. After that, we’ll redesign the eye for the Elvinator. So stay tuned, and don’t miss out on Part 5!
Thank you ever so much for all the replies and positive enforcements. This makes it a fun project to make, when others are enjoying it as much as I am. See ya in Part 5!
GWJax
The WowWee Alive Elvis "Elvinator" Project: Quick Links
Part 1: the Electronics | Part 2: Removing the Skin | Part 3: Inside His Brain
Elvinator Project Thread: Info and Teasers | Elvinator Source Code Thread
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