I am a magical rainbow unicorn.
This was my very first attempt at anything involving animatronics, robotics, automatons, servos, or Making Things Move With Electricity. I think I may be hooked.
I’m a bit surprised at how long it took me to dip my toes in the world of servos. Turns out it’s pretty easy as long as you know the rules*. Also, this project is as simple as I could possibly make it. The ears can only go left or right, and always move in sync with each other.
It’s an actual one-trick pony.
There’s a micro servo in each ear and a Circuit Playground board running the servos and powering the horn. The Circuit Playground conveniently comes with 10 onboard neopixels, so lighting the horn was a logical and straightforward bit of business that gave me some exciting new ideas for things to make with light pipe.
Did you know you can sculpt light pipe with a heat gun, a tumbler of ice water and some patience? I want to make a whole chandelier now. Or maybe some supercool sea life jellyfish sculptures. The coolest thing about this horn design is that each strand carries a different color so when they animate the horn almost seems to move too, swirling around like a delicious magical bit of candy floss. Yum.
Full tutorial for the unicorn hat is live at the Adafruit Learning Center:
Unicorn Hat with Moving Ears Tutorial
Want to see more? Support me over at Patreon.com and let me know you want MORE UNICORNS!
