Planet Arduino

If you’d like your jack-o’-lantern to stand out, a pair of animatronic eyes should do the trick. While there are numerous ways that you can go about this, few (if any) look as good as the set made by Will Cogley in the first video below.

The incredibly realistic 3D-printed eyeballs are installed into the hollowed out pumpkin using skewers as supports, and glance in all directions, along with orange eyelids that open and close for an even more human(ish) appearance. 

The second clip delves deeper into the eyeballs themselves, which come in several forms. Control is via a Wii Nunchuk-esque joystick interface, with the help of an Arduino.

If you’re a fan of Portal games, you’d probably like nothing more than to have your own Wheatley Personality Core to accompany you on real-life adventures. While that would be a passing thought for most, Luke Albertson has created his own amazing replica of the Portal 2 character. 

The device not only can say over 40 phrases from the game via an Adafruit soundboard, but contains a glowing blue eyeball that can pan, tilt, twist, and blink to help express what it’s thinking. It even has handles that move up and down, adding a kind of “flailing arms” effect to convey its emotions. 

Albertson’s animatronic project is controlled by an Arduino Uno, along with a Bluetooth shield and PS3 controller for user interface. It’s shown off quite nicely in the video below, and more info and clips are available here.

With October still six months away, you may not be thinking about Halloween decorations just yet. However, this Arduino-based ocular assembly could make for a spooky yet simple prop!

There are few things more unnerving than an eyeball or three looking at you from some concealed position—such as under clothing as in the project’s video. If you’d like to scare friends, family, or random visitors, Maker Will Cogley has the perfect solution with his 3D-printed animatronic eye and eyelid mechanism.

A joystick moves the eyeball around, while a small push-to-make switch blinks the eye and another potentiometer adjusts how wide open the eyelids are by default. The device itself, which can be controlled with any Arduino board capable of supporting four servos, took him a day to design and build, and should take much less time using his instructions, code, and STL files.

Want to create your own? You can find more details over on Cogley’s Instructables page here.