Wearable Speeder Bikes Are Ready For A Night Out

While Hackaday is about as far from a fashion blog as you can possibly get, we have to admit we’re absolutely loving the [bithead942] Winter 2018 Collection. His wife and daughter recently got to model his latest must have design: wearable Star Wars speeder bikes; and judging by the video after the break they were certainly some of the best dressed at the Thanksgiving parade.

[bithead942] started the build by taking careful measurements of a vintage speeder bike model kit his wife had, which allowed to accurately recreate the iconic look of the vehicles as they were seen in Return of the Jedi . But to do them justice, the final “bikes” would need to be around three meters (ten feet) long, which immediately posed a problem. What kind of material could support itself over that length while still being light enough to wear for extended periods of time?

The answer came, as it often does, from the local hardware store. He found that a combination of Schedule 80 and 40 PVC pipe was a perfect material: strong enough to support the desired dimensions without bending, light enough that the final bike wouldn’t be uncomfortable to wear, easy to bend with heat, and perhaps best of all, cheap and readily available. The PVC frame was then covered with chicken wire and thin flexible foam to give it a filled out look without weighing them down.

Even though he had a strict weight limit on the build, [bithead942] couldn’t help but add in some electronics to complete the effect. The LED festooned control panel allows the ladies to trigger different sound effects from the movie stored on a Adafruit Mini FX Sound Board, which is connected to a 20W Class D amplifier and a pair of 400 watt car stereo speakers. He says the resulting playback was loud enough to hear outside during the parade, and only added a few pounds to the overall build.

These may be the bikes you’re looking for, but they’re definitely not the first we’ve featured on Hackakday. Meanwhile you’d be wise not to underestimate the lowly PVC pipe when designing your next project. From a hacked together drill press for your Dremel to a planetarium for you and your closest dozen or so friends, there’s little you can’t build with this plentiful material.

Continue reading “Wearable Speeder Bikes Are Ready For A Night Out”

Star Wars Speeder’s Finishing Touch: Mirrors

[Super 73] make electric scooters, and they made some Star Wars Speeder Bikes with a twist for Halloween; adding some mirrored panels around the bottoms of the bikes made for a decent visual effect that requires no upkeep or fancy workings. Having amazed everyone with the bikes, they followed them up with a video of the build process.

The speeders are shells built around their Super 73 electric scooter, with bases of what looks like MDF sitting on anchor points. Onto the base platforms goes cardboard and expanding foam to create the correct shapes, which are then sanded then coated in fiberglass and bondo. Then it’s time for paint, weathering, and all the assorted bits and pieces needed to make the speeders as screen-accurate as possible. The real finishing touch are the mirrored panels to conceal the wheels and create a levitation illusion. As long as the mirrors are angled so that they reflect the pavement when viewed by a pedestrian, it works fairly well.

Top it off with costumes and a ride around town (with plenty of cameras of course, they naturally wanted to grab some eyeballs) and we have to say, the end result looks nifty. Both the showcase and making-of videos are embedded below.

Continue reading “Star Wars Speeder’s Finishing Touch: Mirrors”

Hackaday Links Column Banner

Hackaday Links: October 12, 2014

Remember in the late 90s and early 2000s when everything had blue LEDs in them? Blinding blue LEDs that lit up a dark room like a Christmas tree? Nobel prize. There’s a good /r/askscience thread on why this is so important. The TL;DR is that it’s tough to put a p-type layer on gallium nitride.

Have a Segway and you’re a member of the 501st? Here’s your Halloween costume. It’s a model of the Aratech 74-Z speeder bike, most famously seen careening into the side of trees on the forest moon of Endor.

[Andrew] needed something to do and machined an iPhone 5 out of a block of aluminum. Here’s the video of icon labels being engraved. The machine is a Denford Triac with a six station auto tool changer. He’s running Mach3, and according to him everything – including the correct tooling – cost far too much money.

Another [Andrew] was working the LEGO booth at Maker Faire New York and has finally gotten his LEGO Mindstorms Minecraft Creeper build written up. Yes, it’s probably smarter than your average Minecraft Creeper, and this one also blows up. He also had a physical version of the classic video game from 1979, Lunar Lander. Both are extremely awesome builds, and a great way to attract kids of all ages to a booth.

titanium[Wilfred] was testing a titanium 3D printer at work and was looking for something to print. The skull ‘n wrenches was a suitable candidate, and the results are fantastic. From [Wilfred]: “Just out of the printer the logo looks amazing because it isn’t oxidized yet (inside the printer is an Argon atmosphere) Then the logo moves to an oven to anneal the stress made by the laser. But then it gets brown and ugly. After sandblasting we get a lovely bluish color as you can see in the last picture.”

The folks at Lulzbot/Aleph Objects are experimenting with their yet-to-be-released printer, codenamed ‘Begonia’. They’re 2D printing, strangely enough, and for only using a standard Bic pen, the results look great.

Everyone is going crazy over the ESP8266 UART to WiFi module. There’s another module that came up on Seeed recently, the EMW3162. It’s an ARM Cortex M3 with plenty of Flash, has 802.11 b/g/n, and it’s $8.50 USD. Out of stock, of course.