LEGO And Arduino Meet Han Solo

lego blaster gif

This full-size replica blaster from Star Wars, most iconically used by Han Solo and Princess Leia, has everything. Flashing LEDs, blaster noises, LEGO, and yes, even an Arduino. Not bad for [Baron von Brunk]’s first project to use an Arduino!

The blaster was based on electronics and LEGO that were lying around and was intended for use for Star Wars Day 2014. (May the Fourth be with you.) “Lying around” in this sense might be a bit of an understatement for [Baron von Brunk], as the design of the blaster required the use of the LEGO Digital Designer and 400 blocks, some of which are quite rare.

The electronics for the project are tied to a moving trigger mechanism (also made from LEGO). The trigger mechanism hits a momentary pushbutton which tells the Arduino to activate the LEDs and a separate 555 timer and sound recording/playback device which handles the classic blaster sounds. The whole thing is powered by a 9V battery and housed in the front of the blaster, and all of the code (and the LEGO schematics) are available on the project’s site.

This is quite an impressive replica, and the craftsmanship that went into the build shows, especially in the LEGO parts. We think Han Solo would indeed be proud! If you’re ready to go even further with Star Wars and LEGO, you might want to check out this barrel organ that plays the Star Wars theme.

14 thoughts on “LEGO And Arduino Meet Han Solo

    1. It’s a bit of an overstatement to say that this blaster “has an Arduino”. What it HAS is an ATMega running the Arduino firmware. Yes, a ‘tiny could have sufficed, and with a smaller package, but space wasn’t at *that* much of a premium.

    2. I knew there would be an arduino to do this comment. Thanks for not disappointing. It said it was his first project with an arduino. Not everyone was born knowing everything about electronics and need to build up from somewhere.

    3. Also, my brother has a phd in EE, but he has recently started tinkering with ardunio. He knows million times more than I do, but I was helping him with it. He is using the arduino as a means to introduce kids to electronics and allows them to get started easier and with more power. So even though it is an arduino, he has given out over 2000 this year and hundreds of hours teaching kids about electronics that wouldn’t have been able to be exposed with out them.

      Why is everyone so concerned about arduinos? I don’t joke on the guy with the 600hp corvette that is used to go to the grocery store and never has a chance to go above 50mph.

      1. I don’t get it either. Arduino is nice, Ive done non arduino stuff before using one of avrs usb chips on a small form factor dev board. I was hacking scripts and that, but had a makefile which suited the build. But when I went to play with the attiny85 I spent a few houra figuing out gcc compilation for avr on Ubuntu wrote a quick blinky and spent a couple of hours trying to write a working makefile.

        When I got bored of this I configured the arduino ide, burned the bootloader, rewrote the blinky as an arduino sketch and burned that all in about half an hour.

        Everything has its place and arduino is perfect if you want something done quickly, don’t want to design a discrete circuit and aren’t fully clued up on the intricacies of more traditional methods.

        Just my 1.2p

      1. That would require a time machine and going back into time to find his mother… and we all know about the laws of time travel about becoming your own father…

        So no Dont “go make yourself bro”… It will only end in sadness. And dont become your own grandfather either… it makes holidays really awkward.

  1. Actually, I have to point out an error in the description: the 555 timer and 9V battery version of the gun was for the unreleased prototype I built in May. The model you see here and in the Instructables entry is my latest edition which uses a barebones Arduino with an ATmega32, programmed by my Arduino Uno, and is powered by 2 AAA batteries.

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