Don't Disturb the Skeleton

Have you always wanted to just annoy an irritated skeleton? Yes? No? Well now is your chance! In this tutorial I present to you : Don't Disturb the Skeleton! He's peaceful when left alone, but don't you dare peek inside his coffin...

This Skeleton will get angry when disturbed. When you open the doors he will scream and jump up. Then he "kindly" asks you to shut the doors again.

What you need to make this project a reality :

Hardware:

• Arduino Uno
• Breadboard
• Male/Male Jumper wires
• Male/Female Jumper wires
• Normal Wires
• DFPlayer Mini
• 2 Red LED's
• 1 Light Sensor
• 2 Resistors of 220 ohm
• 1 Resistor of 1k ohm
• Micro SD card
• 2 Speakers
• Audio on SD Card (you can find this beneath the materials list, or, if you want to record it yourself, I also added the script)

Software:

• Arduino IDE
• Fritzing

Other Materials

• 3mm Wood
• Solder Board (cut in a few pieces)
• Wire
• Black and White Paint
• Aluminium Foil
• Saw
• Hot Glue Gun
• Isolation Tape
• Masking Tape
• Screw Gun
• Styrofoam Ball 5cm
• Stanley Knife
• Soldering Iron

Here is the schematic of the wiring. Dont forget to add the audio to the Micro SD Card! Otherwise you won't hear anything! You can use an adapter for this to work.

Try building it and see if it works!

The code for this project is in the attachments. It's commented to guide you through the code ;D

You can change the values of the Light Sensor to fit the light of the room you're in. You can check the values by running the code and by opening the serial monitor

For the Coffin I Used 3mm wood. I made the coffin 35 cm long and 24 cm wide. This way there's more than enough room for the Arduino and the wiring. You can freestyle a bit with the form of the coffin to your liking :)
Saw the base piece of the coffin 3 times ; one for the bottom, one for the middle floor, and one for the doors. The one for the door should be cut in half.

The sides are 10 cm high. If everything is correct you should have 3 different sized sides. Make sure you have two pieces of all the sides. The middle floor should be placed about 3,5cm from the bottom.

Now hot glue it together, except for the doors and bottom, and you have a base for the coffin!

After this you can make a base for the skeleton out of iron wire, to see how big you want the skeleton to be. Measure how long the arms have to be for them to be able to place them on the doors. The skeleton has to lift himself up with his hands from the coffin when the doors are opened.
Drill a hole at the hips of the skeleton, this is where the wires will come through. Calculate where you want the speakers to be and drill a little hole for each through the middle floor.

Good! Looks like you're still with me :D

Now we move on the soldering! This step can be a bit tricky, but not too difficult.
Its important to keep a few things in mind in this step :

• Know which wires go through the middle floor. These are the wires with the speakers, LEDs and Light Sensor. DON'T solder these to the wires just yet and make sure the wires are long enough.
• Try to group the wires efficiently to the pieces of solder board and where the wires go through the middle floor.

This is how I think is the best way to organize the wiring :

Keep track of what you do in a notebook and glue the Arduino in the center.
Solder the wiring for the LED and Light sensor on a piece of solder board. Then put the wiring through the middle floor. On the other side you can solder the components to the wires.

Solder the DFPlayer on another piece of solder board. I used Male/Female Jumper wires to connect to this module. The resistor has to be soldered to the DFPlayer. Put the wires meant for the speakers through the holes and solder the speakers on the other side. Then hot glue the speakers to the floor.

Then solder all the wires that use the 5V together on yet another piece of solder board, and also all the wires for the ground. Connect these to the arduino. Now the whole circuit is connected to the arduino!

The last and final step of this tutorial :D

We are gonna build the skeleton around the LEDs and Light Sensor, so make sure you cover them completely in isolation tape! Then choose a material to build the skeleton that also works as an insulator. I used toilet paper and masking tape. Start to build the body around the wires. Keep the elbows free, these have to bend when the doors close.

Use the styrofoam ball for the head. First carve a skull in it and paint it. Then drill two holes in it where the LEDs will go through to the eyes and put it on the body.

For the hands I used some clay, this makes it easier to make the fingers instead of masking tape. When the skeleton has been built its time to paint it!

After painting the skeleton, paint the coffin. When dried, stick the doors to the coffin with tape and paint the tape. Then glue the skeleton's hands to the doors. I also made a framework from leftover wood and hot glued that to the doors. This is optional.

Then paint a cross on the doors and glue the door handles.

Aaaand here it is! Thank you for reading! :D