This is a superb idea but that’d be a huuge UFO, what kind of permit would that require?
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hmmm I guess it could take al ot of permits especially if we wanted to permanently attach it with a spiral staircase from the mezzanine up through the roof up to the dome so you can sit up there and drink beer and wave at potential new members.
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I like the giant snow globe idea. See if we can get access to packing peanuts with some cool laser cut buildings or even the Vancouver skyline in there? Put some LEDs in for back/bottom lighting? Big button that triggers the animations/movement?
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I’m surprised a persistence of vision idea wasn’t suggested… just one option though 
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Can’t believe I’m suggesting this because…so nerdy…Bo’marr Monk from Jabba’s palace.
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Alright here’s another one. Feel free to cut me off any time. 
from: Mars Attacks Alien Maquette Restoration - Tom Spina Designs » Tom Spina Designs
head of Mars attacks dude in the dome. Make with a skull/moving eyes/silicone. Use an ESP to hook it up to twitter using the twitter API. Everytime someone tweets about VHS it speaks in the language of the Mars Attacks Aliens. Warning: could get old fast. 
P.S. I have ping pong balls with painted on pupils that are ready to go. Also can handle the twitter api stuff.
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I love it, I have a pan tilt zoom security camera (twin coaxial stepper motors plus a slip ring) I could donate to make the head spin and tilt. Should have enough torque.
Either way, a hackspace mascot under glass would be pretty rad…could also be a snowglobe mascot…
Also could build an indoor flying saucer we can lower from the ceiling over the lounge to create a saucer of silence. (would probally involve unfrickifiying the hvac pipes first)
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All these ideas are excellent!
Hello! As of last light, I am laying claim to the dome to be an aquarium of sorts for the space’s new pet / alternative mascot. They will be a robotic moving-tentacled creature with articulated eyes and lots of pretty lights. They will live in the dome on the ceiling of the hack space, (near the stairs probably) and be able to be taken down to travel to events. I have attached a preliminary concept of how they may look, but this is not their final form
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Another sketch of possible “travel pose” with the tentacles curled in.
I’ll make a new thread for more updates and progress documentation!
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I fricken love it, now by “laying claim” are you taking this on solo, or is this a group build you are leading? Because I think a few people might want to participate, myself included.
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Outstanding idea! I have a bunch of RC crap we could use to prototype (servos, transmitters, receivers, lipos) and @dbynoe and I discussed Bowden cable mechanisms last night… If we kept the cabling and tentacle materials lightweight, we could probably drive each tentacle off a pair of 9g servos.
Another VHSer was experimenting with rendering eyes on small OLED screens a few years ago… was it packetbob?
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I did start on a tentacle build a while back:
Wonder what box it ended up in…
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Group project, definitely, I’m just spearheading it and making sure it all gets put together in the end!
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I also am going to use this as a learning experience because there’s a lot I don’t know the most efficient way of how to do, and I want to learn it all! (to a certain degree.) I would like to be able to “do it myself” again in theory after the fact from all that I have learned from collaboration.
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The Nov 2 timeline might be a little ambitious, but the theme of this year’s Parade of Lost Souls is Save Our Souls / underwater / marine.
Would be a great way to show off VHS, even if it is not in its final form…
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I present the following for your consideration:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVeJpT2gUI9/
There were plans to eventually add servo control to the system, but I ran out of time I was willing to allot to it - One weekend, I think.
I finished at about the same time as this hackaday series of articles came out, and we solved a lot of parallel problems: https://hackaday.com/2016/09/13/the-bootup-guide-to-homebrew-two-stage-tentacle-mechanisms/
I may or may not have also purchased enough bowden cables, spring jackets, and some neat alternatives to the machines components.
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I have a bunch of Lin Engineering NEMA 08 stepper motors that I can donate to this project if that helps.
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I made a new thread in Projects to discuss and track the progression of our new pet project (see what I did there?)
I am calling them Squiggles as a WIP.
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