Madame Leota Box

My girlfriend and I are BIG Disney fans and the Haunted Mansion is one her favorite rides. I noticed she started collecting Madame Leota items and while she was gone for a few days, I decided to put together a Madame Leota box for her. Granted, I only had a few days but I wanted to recreate Madame Leota appearing in a crystal ball which was the inspiration for this project. Basically it's a decorative wooden box which will start to play a video once the lid is opened and will immediately stop playing once the lid is closed. The video can be changed to something else so it's easily customizable. You can use it for Madame Leota, a Halloween prop, leaving a treasure hunt for the kids, just about anything you can think of, so have fun.

A while back a co-worker received an electronic advertisement in the mail, I'm sure you've seen the electronic cards that will play music once opened, but this advertisement card also had a small LCD screen which would play a video with audio (.MP4 file) once the card was opened. The video would stop and the card would appear to power off once the card was closed. The card has a mini USB port for charging the battery, after connecting it to my computer I saw the one video file saved on the device as well as noting it had a storage capacity of 256 mb. Okay, so with a small battery and limited storage, this was a neat advertising idea but it's not exactly practical for using as a media player. Once the video has played, the unit will shutoff automatically or it will shutoff once the magnetic sensor is in contact with a metal disk(advertisement card closes). I hate throwing-out something perfectly functional and it occurred to me the electronics could be placed in a box and the on/off magnetic sensors could be placed near the box lid. By replacing the video file, having the electronics transplanted in a box with the USB charging/data port accessible, it could be recharged and used multiple times.

What you'll need:

(1) video/audio advertisement card - You can check Aliexpress.com (do a search on "video greetings card")
(1) decoractive box, from Hobby Lobby $10
(4) or more wooden dowel pins 1/4 x 1 1/2", (bag of 20) from Hobby Lobby $2.49
(1) small plywood panel, 5.3/5" x 2.6"x 0.11", (bag of 8) from Hobby Lobby $3.49
Wood glue, Gorilla glue
A small amount of cloth of your choice
A small amount of metal memory wire Gold/copper-looking paint or copper decorative tape
Pop-dot tape (3 rolls) from the Dollar Store $1.00
(1) black plastic table cover from the Dollar Store $1.00
(1) hemisphere lense, Ebay $6.00 (diameter depends on the size of the LCD screen you have and the video you wish to use)
(1) hot glue gun
(1) tube of silicone gasket sealer

I bought a decorative wooden box at Hobby Lobby for $10, the size offers more than enough space for the project.

I used silicone gasket sealer to mount the battery and the speaker to the inside-bottom of the box. I used the this instead of glue because this was my first attempt at this project and I wanted to be able to easily remove the battery and speaker in case there was an issue. Both were placed away from the bottom inside corners, this is where the dowels will go. If you wish to drill holes in your project box for better sound quality, that would work fine. I wanted to leave the box intact and leave it as-is.

Remove the electronics from the attached card. I would advise wearing a ground strap to make sure you don't damage any of the electronics. Carefully and slowly remove the electronics from the attached card. The one I had appeared to have electronics stuck in place from a heat gun and most parts could be removed easily. As luck would have it, the wires for the volume/play buttons, speaker and battery are a few inches in length, not too short, and allow the parts to be positioned easily in the decorative box.

After placing the battery and speaker in place, I used wood glue to mount multiple dowels (4 per corner) along the inside corners of the box, this will allow the plywood panel to be glued on top of the dowels. In the front/top view graphic, the box is represented in black, the dowels and plywood panel is represented in red. The LCD display as well as the buttons will then be centered and hot glued on top of the plywood panel. The plywood panel has a shorter length and width to the box dimensions, this allows the button, speaker, battery and sensor wires to be easily positioned. By default, the volume of the video is probably okay as is, but for my project, I placed both the volume-up and volume-down buttons to right side of the LCD screen. They will eventually be hidden by cloth.

Carefully hot glue the mini USB port to the box or on the plywood panel, whichever is your preference. Keep in mind, this USB port should be covered by cloth when not in use.

The magnetic sensor consists of two parts - a sensor/small circuit board wired to a larger circuit board and a separate small metal disk(smaller than a dime) that physically touches the sensor/small circuit board. When the two components make contact, the video player is off and it's activated once the metal disk breaks contact with the sensor. I hot glued the metal disk to the inside of the box lid and the wired sensor was hot glued to front inner top of the box. Both will make contact once the box is closed, causing the device to be in an off state. Once the lid is opened, the wired sensor and disk will break contact, causing the video player to turn on and play the video file from the beginning.

With the bulk of the electronics now mounted, test the board.

Okay, so it works but we're not done. Madame Leota needs a 'Crystal ball' and a means to cover areas of the screen extending past the glass lens. I placed the hemisphere lens about where I needed it on the LCD screen and tried to center it as best as possible. The idea is to have Madame Leota appear in the lens area only. So take your cloth of choice and cut a rectangle of material at least a half inch larger than the length and width of our box.

Cut a circle in your cloth where you wish to place your hemisphere lens, for my project this was roughly the center of the material. The goal is to have your glass hemisphere lens be the only area of the screen you wish to view and block the rest of the screen with the cloth. The circular hole needs to be as close in size to the base of the lens as possible.

Cut a section of metal memory wire the perimeter of the glass hemisphere lens and form it into a ring. I discovered I couldn't solder the ring closed so instead I glued both ends and added a bit of gold colored paint. You can also use a decorative copper tape if paint isn't available.

Carefully apply a thin layer of gorilla glue to one side of the memory wire ring and place it over the edge of the cloth hole. It should appear as though the ring is covering the edge of the cloth, and the hemisphere lens will fit inside the ring.

In the photo you can see the end result with the glass lens placed in the metal ring.

You should now have a rectangle of cloth with a hole cut out for the lens, the metal ring is glued directly over the top/edge of hole. I did not want to directly glue the lens to the LCD screen and have any mishaps, so I applied dot-pop tape directly to the LCD screen which would be placed against the ring from step 7 and help keep the ring and the lens in place. This isn't a perfect method of keeping the lens in place but this also is not a toy, it's meant to be decorative.

Once the dot-pop tape is applied to firmly hold the ring and lens from moving, now tuck the rest of the cloth down the inner sides of the box.

Charge the battery via the USB port and transfer your video of choice. I found a Madame Leota video on youtube and added the Haunted Mansion music as well as some 'intro mist' before Leota appears. You can download the MP4 video provided in the download link below and try it with your project. I didn't experience any issues playing other MP4 video files as long as the file size was less than 256 MB. I determined the video player storage capacity by connecting the video player to a computer via USB and the device appeared as a removable drive. Viewing the properties of the drive displayed the capacity and from there I could easily delete any existing file and transfer another file to the device.

Suggestion: If you can still see light through the cloth you're using, something you can do is cut one or more rectangles of the black plastic table cover, and cut holes in it as you did before with the cloth. Place the plastic layer under the cloth layer and it should block unwanted light from the LCD screen.