DIY Portal Turret Is… Looking Pretty Good.

[Ryan Palser] wrote in to tell us about his Portal Turret. [Ryan] set about making this Portal 1 style turret by first carving a Styrofoam form, bondo and waxing then casting molds of the various components. Anyone interested in mold making (like us) should check out all the pictures and comments in the stream. The turret’s camera lens style eye has some excellent detail including a laser cut aperture with text inlay. A couple LEDs behind the eye assembly provide the signature red glow and evidently [Ryan] also fitted the little guy with a red laser. An internal Arduino (Incident Resolution Chip?) takes ques from a PIR sensor mounted in one of the turret’s arms to play one of 17 sound clips through a sparkfun MP3 player shield. In order to fight repetition the sound module runs through a playlist of the 17 tracks then shuffles it before playing through again. Theme music can also be spammed by pressing a button in the back of the motion sensing arm. The turret can be battery powered or plugged into a wall socket for constant operation. All that’s missing are the Aperture-Brand Resolution Pellets. We would love to see this integrated with some similar turret projects previously featured here.

Are you still there? We have more Aperture Science stuff including a Sentry Turret, Weighted Companion Cube, and even a portal shirt. If you are interested in more model making check out the spectacular Daft Punk helmet build from a little while back.

19 thoughts on “DIY Portal Turret Is… Looking Pretty Good.

  1. This looks great. Good work on the skin.
    I really want a companion cube made in similar style. Considering doing similar style to this build, but I lack experience.
    Probably be willing to pay around $250 for one though.

  2. @dan fruzzetti
    A counter-recoil system in the gun would be able to reduce the shock of any round considerably. If you can’t get one then .22s are certainly weak enough to fire without jostling the turret.

  3. awesome. I toyed around with some CAD software and touched up the Portal 1 model, but arrived at some problems with the impossible mechanics. (when the doors are closed there’s just 2cm of space in the middle…) They seem to have become more realistic in Portal 2, but I can’t get the models to open, without the SDK…

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