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Lea the giant Marionette

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GBradley

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I am building a pair of 9' marionettes for a children's show in the fall of this year, and I've run into a problem that I need help with. I have succeeded in building a set of 2-1/4" eyes which I can control with a RC controller for miniature cars. I have installed a mini servo inside the inner eyeball which raises and lowers the eyelid driven by the accelerator trigger of the RC, and it's easy enough to build the swiveling of the eyes with a standard servo driven by the steering control on the RC.
On the other hand, I have purchased a Basic Stamp BS2p board, and I would like to learn to hook that up to a Radio Control. I have succeeded in hooking it up directly to the servo and programming it with an open and close button on the Basic Stamp, but the behavior is not as satisfactory as the Car RC. Should I abandon the Basic Stamp, or can I get the same smooth behavior that I get from the car RC? I am not a programmer but I would like to learn.
I have a video of the working eyes demonstrating the behavior that I want, if it can be posted here somehow.
 
You're going to get the smoothest most realistic motion from the RC setup. Even the most advanced 3D motions systems for computer graphics that you see in the movies use motion capture (either from an actor a puppeteer) to get the movement right.

That being said it is possible to get realistic motion from a micro controller, but it requires a lot of programming. Basically any movement from point A to point B needs to start and stop as a sine wave and the speed of the movement needs to be adjustable for different types of actions. Integrating linear movement with slew rate control is the simplest method, but not as smooth looking as finely control sine wave movement. Even then you need to look at the motion on a real subject and figure out how to code the A-B-C-D point movements and the slew rate over those movement points to get fluid believable movement.
 
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