Star Wars Speeder’s Finishing Touch: Mirrors

November 8, 2017 by Donald Papp 19 Comments

[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.

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This Mask Will Make You A Psycho

October 28, 2017 by James Hobson 8 Comments

Videos games are a cornucopia of project ideas well-suited to the talents of makers and hackers, and Halloween is as good a time as any to show them off! Reddit user [Tavarin], a huge fan of the Boderlands video games, whipped up a plaster mask — replete with glowing eyes — of one of the game’s signature enemies: the Psycho.

[Tavarin]’s secret to forming comfortable plaster masks is to open his jaw while the wrap is setting — that way he’ll be able to talk without breaking the mask off his face. Hot gluing in and modifying a 60mm PC fan and a pair of lenses meant that the only thing standing between him and a lot of sanding to shape the mask’s details was a few layers of thick plaster mix.

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Stormtrooper Voice Changer Helmet Uses Teensy To Mangle Audio

November 9, 2016 by Donald Papp 27 Comments

Halloween has come and gone, but this DIY voice changing Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet tutorial by [Shawn Hymel] is worth a look for a number of reasons. Not only is the whole thing completely self-contained, but the voice changing is done in software thanks to the Teensy’s powerful audio filtering abilities. In addition, the Teensy also takes care of adding the iconic Stormtrooper clicks, pops, and static bursts around the voice-altered speech. Check out the video below to hear it in action.

Besides a microphone and speakers, there’s a Teensy 3.2, a low-cost add-on board for the Teensy that includes a small audio amp, a power supply… and that’s about it. There isn’t a separate WAV board or hacked MP3 player in sight.

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Monstrous Suit Of Power Armor 3D Printed Over 140 Days

October 18, 2016 by Donald Papp 36 Comments

[hirocreations] printed an entire suit of enormous Fallout power armor on his Monoprice Maker Select 3D printer, which took some 140 days and over 120 pounds of IC3D PLA filament. Happily, [hirocreations] was able to arrange a sponsorship with IC3D for the build – who would be crazy enough to use so much filament over so long for an entire 7+ foot tall suit, right? Over those 140 days, the belts on the printer needed to be replaced twice but it otherwise chugged right along.

Most of the parts were printed at 0.46 mm layer height. Individual parts were welded (melted) together using what is essentially a soldering iron with a flat tip; many parts were too thin for any kind of joints or fixtures to be practical. Parts were smoothed with drywall spackle, lots of filler primer, and painted. Some of the parts – like the chest armor – are mounted on a frame made from PVC tubing. [hirocreations] may have gone through 120 pounds of filament, but the end result doesn’t weigh that much; the suit itself weighs in at 85-90 lbs, the rest of it went to support material, skirts, and print failures.

It was known from the start that weight could become a serious issue, so [hirocreations] went for a very light infill (10%) and 3-4 perimeter layers; he also extruded at a high temperature (~230C) which he said seemed to provide a very strong layer bond with the settings and filament he was using. So far, he says it’s taken some very hard knocks and nothing has broken or cracked. He has a short video series documenting the assembly, and you can see some of the raw armor parts before any finishing in one of the videos, embedded below.

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Put Words In Your Dog’s Mouth With A Talking Dog Collar

April 7, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 21 Comments

It’s just a little past Halloween, but Adafruit’s talking dog collar, modeled after the movie Up, is still a nice fusion between crafting and hacking.

One reason that Adafruit is so popular is that every time they sell us something, they give us some of the worlds best tutorials and libraries for free. For this project they’re using their Bluetooth LE board and their Audio FX board with a few more mundane vitamins to construct the collar. We’re sure the enterprising hacker could find alternatives if they so choose.

The collar is made of leather and 3D printed props. They went with alkaline batteries rather than lithium, to keep their doggy companion a little safer. All the electronics are hidden under the various props and the wiring is routed behind the belt. To control the app, the different sound bytes are mapped to buttons on their Bluetooth-to-serial phone app.

It’s a good starter tutorial, and the concept applied differently would definitely be good for at least one good prank on a coworker or friend.

Hackaday Links: October 18, 2015

October 18, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

We have our featured speakers lined up for the Hackaday Supercon, one of which is [Fran Blanche]. We’ve seen a lot of her work, from playing with pocket watches to not having the funding to build an Apollo Guidance Computer DSKY. In her spare time, she builds guitar pedals, and there’s a biopic of her in She Shreds magazine.

Halloween is coming, and that means dressing children up as pirates, fairies, characters from the latest Marvel and Disney movies, and electrolytic capacitors.

There’s a new movie on [Steve Jobs]. It’s called the Jobs S. It’s a major upgrade of the previous release, featuring a faster processor and more retinas. One more thing. Someone is trying to cash in on [Woz]’s work. This time it’s an auction for a complete Apple I that’s expected to go for $770,000 USD.

Hackaday community member [John McLear] is giving away the factory seconds of his original NFC ring (think jewelry). These still work but failed QA for small reasons and will be fun to hack around on. You pay shipping which starts at £60 for 50 rings. We’ve grabbed enough of them to include in the goody bags for the Hackaday Superconference. If you have an event coming up, getting everyone hacking on NFC is an interesting activity. If you don’t want 50+, [John] is also in the middle of a Kickstarter for an improved version.

Your 3D printed parts will rarely come out perfectly. There will always be some strings or scars from removing them from the bed. There’s a solution to these problems: use a hot air gun.

Everyone has a plumbus in their home, but how do they do it? First, they take the dinglebop, and smooth it out with a bunch of schleem. The schleem is then repurposed for later batches.

"Stomach Shot" lets you see through your zombie corpse.

“Stomach Shot” Halloween Costume

November 11, 2014 by Marsh 12 Comments

Halloween may have come and gone, but [Luis] sent us this build that you’ll want to check out. An avid Walking Dead fan, he put in some serious effort to an otherwise simple bloody t-shirt and created this see-through “stomach shot” gunshot wound.

The project uses a Raspi running the Pi Camera script to feed video from a webcam on the back of his costume to a 7″ screen on the front. [Luis] attached the screen to a GoPro chest harness—they look a bit like suspenders—to keep it centered, then built up a layer of latex around the display to hide the hard edges and make it more wound-like. Power comes from a 7.4V hobby Lipo battery plugged into a 5V voltage converter.

After ripping a small hole in the back of his t-shirt for the webcam and a large hole in the front for the screen, [Luis] applied the necessary liberal amount of fake blood to finish this clever shotgun blast effect.