Resources – zappedmyself.com

This page last updated Jan 8, 2023

This section have links to sites, book and other resources I have found helpful for DIY animatronics, LED lighting, electronics and various other geeky topics.

Web Sites

Great spreadsheet with information on addressable RGB LEDs. Covers the LEDs, controllers, software, connectors, etc…

http://awesomeledlist.com

Here are some Christmas Lighting sites:

http://doityourselfchristmas.com/

https://diychristmas.org/vb5/index.php

https://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/

https://falconchristmas.com/forum/

http://xlights.org/

http://www.vixenlights.com/

These are the defacto Halloween decoration and prop websites:

https://www.halloweenforum.com/

https://www.hauntforum.com/

The Stan Winston School Of Character Arts has lots of animatronic and movie effects related content. The videos are a bit pricey if you take watch them individually but a years access is $360 US (sometimes goes on sale) and you can watch all of them as many times as you want. Extremely reasonable for the content you get.

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/

The Poormans Guide To Animatronics has a huge blog with lots of examples and pictures of various animatronic projects:

https://www.poormansguidetoanimatronics.com/blog-1

Facebook Sites

There don’t seem to be many DIY animatronic web sites around but there are a few pretty active Facebook sites. All of them are private, to help keep down the spam, so you have to request access. These groups are well worth it to find DIY animatronic info:

DIY Animatronics Group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/891805981203854/

Animatronic Builders – https://www.facebook.com/groups/747161395755561/

DIY Halloween Animatronics – https://www.facebook.com/groups/DIYHalloweenAnimatronics/

THE ANIMATRONIC FORUM – https://www.facebook.com/groups/215520962797038/

YouTube Channels

https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasSpiess

Andreas Spiess has videos on many RF related topics.

https://www.youtube.com/c/LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

Sam Battle has a ton of synth and MIDI projects and runs a museum in the UK that houses a boatload of interesting stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/c/DavesGarage

Dave Plummer is a retired M$ employee (beginning in the Win3.1 days) and his videos cover a lot of early personal computer development.

https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff

Mike Harrison does LED art installations and has videos detailing how he designs and builds controllers for them. He also loves to take stuff apart and has an interesting web site.

https://www.youtube.com/user/lightman500

Brian Lincoln has lost of videos detailing his many animatronic projects.

https://www.youtube.com/c/timhunkin1

Tim Hunkin has built many interactive art installations and has a great video series on all sorts of components he uses.

https://www.youtube.com/c/halstaff

Steve Koci (who sadly passed away in 2021) has all sorts of videos on DIY animatronics.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOG6Bi2kvpDa1c8gHWZI5CQ

Cine-Lights has many examples of LED projects.

https://www.youtube.com/c/Bigclive

How can you not like Big Clive!!