While LEGO minifigures are great, what about a pair of them measuring in at three feet (91 centimetres) that also happen to be animated robots that you can play Operation on?
Matthew Harrell is the Doctor Frankenstein and these are his monsters. Two giant LEGO minifigs that he has outfitted with electronics to replicate the game of Operation. Instead of trying to fish out plastic organs and bones, kids would have a try at getting candy as this was a Halloween project.
Harrell accomplished this by creating the two builds of a crazy scientist and monster back in 2013. Since then he has been improving on a scene featuring them every year. In 2015 he added a bed for the monster complete with fog effects.
But 2016 featured the most drastic changes. The monster had several cavities cut into the torso and legs which were then filled with 3D printed candy receptacles. Each of these were given an aluminium lip.
Using a pair of tongs, kids could try and fish the candy out. If they happened to touch the sides, however, they were in for a trick.
When the tongs touched the aluminium they completed a circuit which activated motors moving the limbs of both figures as well as some audio clips.
To do this Harrell had to extensively modified his builds. The legs, for example, were too heavy to be lifted with the motors. The wooden legs were then replaced with 3D printed ones. The arms and heads are sitting on top of bearings to swivel around just like a real LEGO minifigures, and everything is hooked up to an Arduino UNO.
Our favourite touch here is the fact that the speakers are placed inside of the heads of the figures, with the speaker grill in the place of the mouth.
If you’re wondering where the designs for the two figures came from, they’re based on a set from 2012 from LEGO’s Monster Fighters theme. The set in question is 9466-1: The Crazy Scientist & His Monster and Harrell has done a sterling job recreating not only the minifigures, but the bed for the monster too. It’s almost a perfect replica of the little build that exists in the set.
[Source – hackster.io Via The RPF]
