Rotary Switching Mechanism

So, after a talk with Patrick yesterday, we decided that maybe locomotion of the actual monster wasn't the way to go for my project. I had been working on making my machine move for quite some time, so I was a little bit dejected after our talk, but I found solace in my favourite online forums. During my visit on these particular forums, I came across a poster who had an avatar with a rotary engine animation in it. It didn't click at the time for me, so I can't remember his username, or which thread I saw his avatar in, but I did remember the rotary engine.
This is a picture of a rotary engine, and basically it just worked by using a ring of pistons surrounding a crankshaft. As the off-balanced crankshaft spins, it pushes and pulls the pistons in and out. My switch mechanism isn't quite like the rotary engine, though, because it will be powered by radio waves or audio input of some kind, so the power will come from an external electrical source, not a series of explosions.

First thing's first, I had to create some pistons for the crankshafts to fit into.
I used brass tubing for the piston, and millboard to hold the whole thing up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the crankshaft being constructed, but its height determined the height of my millboard braces. Once these were created, I had to make connections from my crankshaft to my pistons, and thankfully, I found a great material for this type of thing.
This copper wiring that I borrowed from Candice worked perfectly, because it's malleable enough that it can be shaped easily, but strong enough that it can easily hold its shape. I made eight of these and eight pistons, and then connected them to my mount that has the crankshaft on it.

This it the mechanism with just four pistons mounted to it, but it looks much cooler with eight.


So no what I have is eight switches that will be controlled by the speed of the motor, which will be controlled by the volume and strength of the radio waves coming into my monster. I'm going to mount a small motor on this board to power the crankshaft in the center. Both pulleys are from my previous locomotion experiment, so I guess that wasn't a total loss. I plan to turn this into the nerve center of my monster, and I also plan on using my arduino board to start taking inputs from this switch and counting the number of rotations so that I can control my monster with more precision.