3D Printed Pip-Boy, Geiger Counter Not Included

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Yes, we all love portal guns and crowbars, but there’s one piece of video game paraphernalia that could conceivably be a useful piece of hardware for the modern technologist. It’s the Pip-Boy 3000, the wrist-wearable computer from Fallout, and now you can print on on your 3D printer.

All the pieces for this Pip-Boy are available over on Thingiverse. Included in those files are a dozen plastic parts that, when assembled, come together to form a wrist-mounted computer. You could, of course, print out a static image of a Pip-Boy screen for this build, but [dragonator] made a little addition to his model – he put in a space for a smartphone, so all your environmental sensors and inventory management also work with this 3D printed model.

This is far from the first wearable Pip-Boy we’ve seen, but it is the first that’s able to be fabricated on a 3D printer, and comes with the nice bonus of being the best phone case ever. It’s still a lot of work to put this together, but we’re going to say the results are fantastic.

You can check out the demo video of the Pip-Boy below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZEGLmWa2A&w=520]

27 thoughts on “3D Printed Pip-Boy, Geiger Counter Not Included

  1. LOVE THIS!!
    I always imagined the Pip-Boy to be a bit more black than gold but as it seems to almost match the table in hue possibly looks more gold due to lighting?

    Awesome build!

      1. 3d printed muggy bot?

        Making him balance would probably be a challenge but I think if you just replaced his wheel with a stand (just make it have a flat plate underneath to hold him up) you could still have a platform for a seriously cool build. Stick a few servo’s in so he can shift his body and wave his arms and use one of the various LCD modules in his chest, perhaps big enough for a pi inside. Have him notify you of emails with quotes from new vegas? Muggy the desk buddy

  2. Although nixie tube lights would’ve been far better than LEDs =) I believe there was a featured Pip-Boy hack on here last year that used nixie tubes. I won’t spend the 30 seconds searching, I’m sure you know which one I mean.

    1. I believe some of the 4d systems screens would work perfectly for this. make the sd card accesible from the outside so you can update it all easily, and maybe a pogo peg programming interface for whatever uC you throw in there, i think it’d be doable. I might just have to try this…

  3. As each month passes I’m reminded that I may officially be an old fart. I stated reading the article with WTF is a pip-boy? Even with a web search I’m still not sure what it is. As long as the builder had fun designing, building & using the finish project is all that matters I don’t visit HAD expecting to find only what I’d duplicate.

    1. Wrist mounted computer in the video game fallout. This is the incarnation from fallout 3 and fallout new vegas specifically. premise is that the game was set in an alternate time line where technology took a bit of a different path, everything is sort of stylised as if its in the 50’s but they have nuclear cars, a retro future if you will and this just happens to be their smart phone.

    2. I don’t think you should feel that way just because you haven’t played a certain game. To be honest, I felt a little alienated when I saw the first round of these hacks years ago when I hadn’t played it yet. Now I have I realise these hacks for what they are. True Fallout Porn! :)

  4. Nice design, loved the idea of using a smartphone for the screen, though it does appear a bit bulky when worn but that can be good as anyone out their with the files might add a few spaces/cavities to hold some additions (extra batteries, sensors, hidden I/O ports, etc) or slim down the designs just a bit either by modifying the part files or using different materials.

    I look forward to seeing what other people come up with.

  5. I don’t think the idea of a real pip-boy to be a bad idea, of course implementing it would be something entirely different; add a heart monitor, a Geiger counter (although not really needed this day and age), a notepad app, and a GPS and I guess since communication is more of a thing in our world than in the fallout world add either a built in smart phone or phone attachment (head phone jack with a speak on in I would assume work). Not a techie so to speak but having a wrist computer is something we should have already; by back to the future standards we should have flying cars by now.

  6. Stick a Nokia N900 in there with a custom GUI, add USB-host (how else would I plug in a holodisk?), throw in a flashlight, a small speaker (and a 3.5mm jack for plugging in speakers), as many sensors as you can stick in it, all hooked up to some kind of microcontroller that communicates with the Nokia by serial or bluetooth, and you’ve got yourself a fully functioning Pip-Boy with GPS, WiFi, media playing capabilities and a whole lot of other features. And if you customize the case of the Pip-Boy to allow the N900’s keyboard to slide out, you even got a full QWERTY keyboard.

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