Most animated props just sit still until a motion sensor trips or someone pokes at a phone app, and that gets stale fast on a busy night. The maker went the other way with a 6.5ft Ultra Skelly, building an ESP32 controller around BLE instead of relying on the stock triggers. The goal was to give the figure a mind of its own.
The mechanical side covers randomized head, arm, torso and jaw movements, all driven by the ESP32. The eyes are LCD screens set into the skull, displaying glowing blue irises, and the same controller shifts the RGB lighting alongside the eye expressions. Bundling movement, eyes and light under one randomized routine seems like the detail that keeps the figure from looking like an obvious loop.
What stands out to me is Skelly Studio, a browser-based configuration tool that lets behavior be adjusted without constantly editing Arduino code. Animation patterns and timing are customizable, everything is free and open-source, and operation needs no phone, Wi-Fi or motion sensor: power it up and let it run. Automatic Bluetooth reconnection after power cycles also appears to be handled, which seems a smart inclusion for anything left outside overnight.
One thing stays open. The maker has not said which motor drives the head, and the internal drive electronics of the figure remain unclear. Anyone hoping to copy the head movement exactly would need that detail first, so hopefully it surfaces later.