Thanks to its innovative gameplay and quirky humor, Portal became an instant hit when it was released in 2007. Characters became cultural icons, quotes became memes and the game became a classic along with its 2011 sequel. Even today, more than a decade later, we regularly see hackers applying their skills in recreating some of the game’s elements. One beautiful example is [Joran de Raaff]’s physical rendition of a Portal Turret.
[Joran] decided to use his 3D printer to create a Turret that can move and speak exactly as it does in the game. The result, as you can see in the video embedded below, was a triumph. We’re making a note here, “huge success”. The outer shell is a beautiful shiny white, an effect achieved through patient sanding, priming, and spraying with high-gloss paint. The internals are even more impressive with servos, microswitches, and a whole array of 3D-printed gears, cams, and levers.
A motion sensor activates the Turret whenever a human moves nearby. It will then open its wings and fire its guns while playing the corresponding sounds from the game. Its brains are formed by a Wemos D1 which drives the various LEDs and servos, while an MP3 player board holds a library of sound bites and plays them through a speaker hidden inside the Turret’s shell.
After posting his creation on YouTube [Joran] got many requests for the 3D files, so he made them available and wrote a comprehensive build guide. This should enable anyone with a 3D printer to build this neat gun, without getting too much science done. If this model is too small for you, then perhaps this life-sized model is more to your liking. If you prefer your Turret small and cute, check out this plushie version.
https://joranderaaff.nl/portal-sentry/
Too bad it cannot walk and shot real projectiles …next revision then ;-D
The ones in the game couldn’t walk, could they?
This is lovely; kudos for a fine build!
One question, though: it’s been a long time since I played, but didn’t the turrets have extending gun barrels? Or am I misremembering?
No they could not walk – but they could angle their guns up / down so they had much more range. However this one is still much better than a completely static model.
This is lovely; kudos for a fine build!
One question, though: it’s been a long time since I played, but didn’t the turrets have extending gun barrels? Or am I misremembering?
Never mind; just did a quick image search, and it’s my memory at fault!
They do move when the wings open!
The Division (1,II) needs portal turrets. Firefights with witty dialogue.
These are really wonderful! Thanks for sharing!
I think I saw this one at SHA2017.. Tkkrlab? Or is this a different one?
This one you mean:
https://ytec3d.com/big-turret/
Cool! Let’s wait a bit. In a few years, open source AI software perhaps will run well enough on something like a future Pi Zero and such animatronics could become real, autonomous robots. Wouldn’t that be funny? Let’s imagine a Furby that tracks your eyes and starts a discussion about random topics. Like classic Eliza, but more intelligent and with offline speech recognition. Let’s just hope it won’t react like that robot bear in the episode “Honey, The Bear Is Bad News” of Honey, I shrunk the kids. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfv5zeOKxU4
When you started that comment about intelligent Furby my mind immediately jumped to “I Always Do What Teddy Says” by Harry Harrison… Its an interesting read (or at least so I remember it being), certainly through provoking when you see how close the technology is to being entirely real now…
it’s full of gears, but no bullets, you know as GlaDOS says, “those round things, full of bullets..of wait, that’s you..”
Nice build!
The real thing gave me a PTSD…
For silly video game conspiracy theories, what are the odds that The Engineer took a job working for Aperture Science after the events of Team Fortress 2, and the portal gun is a development of the TF2 teleporters? If that’s the case, perhaps the turrets were a botcher early beta of a combined dispenser / turret.
Sounds plausible.
I think they actually made suggestions of a link to the Half Life universe rather than TF2.
Really cool
A parts list with links would be the most helpful as I’ve printed all the parts but there are items in having a hard time sourcing.