LethalLilyAnimatronic

Arduino code to talk to the Lethal Lily Swamp Witch animatronic head servos. This Halloween prop was sold in 2023 by Home Depot. Here is a demo on YouTube from Frightman Frights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfH5UD395NY

Here is my blog series documenting my research and experiments:

https://subethasoftware.com/2024/06/12/hacking-home-depot-lethal-lily-animatronic-props/

Lethal Lily Information

Home Depot press release from 2023: https://corporate.homedepot.com/news/products/innovation-quality-and-value-introducing-home-depots-2023-halloween-product-lineup
Unofficial Wiki: https://seasonalvisionslimited.fandom.com/wiki/Lethal_Lily
Replacement parts (where you can order just the head, control box, power supply, sensor, etc.): https://sviservice.com/collections/2023/products/sv2323794

Capabilities

Only the mouth of the head can be controlled, while the rest of the animations (eyes, eyelids, neck) are preset patterns. There are seven preset patterns (numbered 1-7) and one stop pattern (number 8). The stop pattern will halt any animation that is playing and reset the head back to a default state.

Patterns are started or stopped by writing out a byte at 550 baud over a wire. While a pattern is playing, the mouth can be controlled by pulsing voltage to another wire. The pulses are ignored when the head is in stop mode.

The patterns (to be documented) play for a certain amount of time, then motion stops. The mouth can still be controlled until the "stop" byte is sent, turning off the head.

Technical Specs

Power Supply

The Lethal Lily Control Box uses a 5.9V 3A DC power supply.

MNodel No: GQ24-059300-AU
Input: 100-240V ~ 50/60Hz 1.0A Max
Output: 5.9V --- 3.0A
Barrel connector has center tip as POSITIVE.

Control Box

The Control Box has the following:

5.9V Power Input (barrel connector).
Volume knob.
Three-Position Switch - Sensor, Off/Try Me, Lights Only
Speaker
"Try Me" switch input. (Unsure; probably sdomething like a 1/8" jack).

There are four cables coming out that run to square connectors:

2-Wire (red/black) - ??? lights ???
2-Wire w/plastic housing (red/black) - ??? lights ???
3-Wire (white/blue/green) - motion sensor
4-Wire (green/red/black/blue) - to head

Protocol

The green wire sends out serial data at around 550 baud. When Lethal Lily is triggered, a start byte will be sent, and at the end of the sequence, and end byte will be sent.

The format of the byte is the right four bits as the number (1-7 for sequence start, and 8 for sequence end), and the left four bits are the inverted bits of the same value.

    //              Hex Binary
    //              --  ---- ----
    // Sequence 1 - E1  1110 0001 (1)
    // Sequence 2 - D2  1101 0010 (2)
    // Sequence 3 - C3  1100 0011 (3)
    // Sequence 4 - B4  1011 0100 (4)
    // Sequence 5 - A5  1010 0101 (5)
    // Sequence 6 - 96  1001 0110 (6)
    // Sequence 7 - E1  1000 0111 (7)
    // End of Seq - 78  0001 1000 (8)

When sequence playback begins, the blue wire will begin pulsing. These are the signals the control the mouth.

I/O pins and 5.9V WARNING!!!

The green wire serial appears to be 4.4V, so it should be fine reading on an Arduino with 5V input pins.
The blue wire pulse output appears to be about 5.4V. This could damage hardware that can only handle 3.3V or 5V I/O. A voltage divider made of two resistors can be used to lower this to safe level for an Arduino to read. For my experiments, I used a 10K Ohm resistor between the blue wire and the Arduino digital input pin, then ran a 100K Ohm resistor from the same input pin over to ground. (ChatGPT suggestion; I will update this with more accurate information once I have tested it.)

TO DO

Document all seven animation patterns.
Finish Arduino code to talk to a relay board (to toggle the mouth) and an audio player board.

allenhuffman/LethalLilyAnimatronic