Crawling Hand

[JackMan]

      We've all seen those cheap crawling hands that you can get at the retail stores during the Halloween season. I picked up one of the Frankenstein versions for $5 last year on clearance. They're sound activated but that obviously doesn't give you any control. I needed the ability to turn it on exactly when I wanted so I came up with a cheap but effective solution. I picked up a small radio controlled truck at Walmart for $8 and disassembled it. After carefully checking the points on the circuit boards that I needed to hack into, I connected the receiver board to the circuit inside the Crawling Hand (it fit inside nicely) using a small relay and disconnected the microphone trigger. I used the existing battery configuration to also power the receiver. I hacked the transmitter with another small relay connected to the appropriate N.O. contacts on the board. I inserted code to one of the Prop-1's already running my show that had a spare OUTx. Works like a charm, I get the hand to crawl exactly when I need it with no wires attached.
        The Rx/Tx actually has 2 channels that can be used for two separate functions.  This setup would be a cheap way to have wireless control for other props as well.