Motion-activated “Jan in the Pan”

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Motion-activated “Jan in the Pan”
TheBrainThatWouldntDie.jpg
jan_in_the_pan.jpg

Reader JC just submitted this fantastic haunted house prop to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009. It’s a recreation of the always-lovely female lead from 1962’s sci-fi camp classic The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, immortalized in 1993 as Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s experiment 513 (and, arguably, before that by Steve Martin’s The Man with Two Brains).

“She won’t be doing any heavy lifting for awhile…”

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

6 thoughts on “Motion-activated “Jan in the Pan”

  1. Jonny says:

    Great idea, poorly executed. Perhaps some more time could have gone into making the prop look more like the original.

  2. Les says:

    When I was his apparent age I could barely make a fist, much less come up with something like this. Sure, could add some bubbles, sparks or LEDs, but the movie itself wasn’t exactly a SFX masterpiece.

  3. Sean Michael Ragan says:

    JC was pretty excited about getting his project up on the blog, and I imagine Jonny’s comment has him at least a little upset.

    JC, don’t take it to heart. I didn’t post this because you’re young and I thought it was “cute” or “a good effort.” I dig this project and lots of other folks do, too. I’d give dollars to donuts that none of your peers has a project posted on this blog.

    Whatever you do in life, no matter how well you do it, if you do it publicly, there will be critics. Especially on the internet. Don’t even let them slow you down.

    Jonny, this is not a scolding. You are entitled to your opinion, and I’m guessing you didn’t stop to consider that JC seems to be at an impressionable age before you made your comment.

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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