# A Zoltar-style fortune teller that talks back

Lillith is an animated fortune teller with servos, synthesized speech and a button that dispenses a prophecy slightly better than a takeaway fortune cookie.

- Category: Hardware (build)
- Made by: Oh Well Why Not on Hackaday
- Original: https://www.instructables.com/Building-an-Arcade-Style-Life-Size-Animatronic-For
- On Afterware: https://afterware.xyz/p/a-zoltar-style-fortune-teller-that-talks-back

## Can I build this?

- Difficulty: Advanced
- AI-buildability: 3/5 (AI can write the servo choreography, button handling and speech generation code, but the figure, cabinet, mechanisms and wiring are hands-on fabrication.)
- Time: A month or more
- Cost: $150–400
- Tools: soldering iron, 3D printer, power supply, hand tools

Estimates based on the original write-up. How the AI-buildability score works: https://afterware.xyz/ai-buildability

## Build sheet

- Type: Animatronic fortune teller
- Motion: Servos
- Audio: Voice generation
- Build time: About four months

## Starter prompt

```
Based on "A Zoltar-style fortune teller that talks back" on Afterware: https://afterware.xyz/p/a-zoltar-style-fortune-teller-that-talks-back

Help me build an animatronic fortune teller on a Raspberry Pi. Use two or more hobby servos driven by a PCA9685 board, a momentary arcade button to trigger a reading, and offline text-to-speech to speak a random fortune from a list. While idle, play slow random servo movements to attract passersby.
```

## Story

Remember Zoltar in the arcade, or the fortune teller in the movie Big? Lillith is a build in that tradition. Servos move the figure while a voice generator delivers the reading once someone hits the button.

Between customers, the servos run small idle animations to pull in the next person. The build took about four months, according to the write-up, and the maker documented a roadmap others can follow. The post notes Lillith sits indoors rather than in a public venue, and that an outdoor version would need a tougher enclosure.

## Resources

- [Build guide (Instructables)](https://www.instructables.com/Building-an-Arcade-Style-Life-Size-Animatronic-For)

Tags: animatronic, servo, voice synthesis, arcade, fortune teller, interactive

AI assistants can search all Afterware builds through the MCP server at https://afterware.xyz/mcp (setup: https://afterware.xyz/agents).