Your Halloween Costume May Be Cool, But It’s Not Laser-Cut Cardboard Vintage Airplane Cool

October 13, 2014 by Kristina Panos 33 Comments

While others are absorbed in baseball playoffs, [Aidan] has spent his recent Octobers planning incredible Halloween costumes for his son. We don’t know what he did last year, but there’s no way it’s better than this laser-cut cardboard airplane costume.

He had a few specs in mind and started with a model of a Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat from 3D Warehouse. Using SketchUp, he simplified the model and removed the landing gear and the propeller. [Aidan] created a simpler model on top of that, and set to work changing the proportions to make it adorable and toddler-sized.

To build around his son’s proportions, he inserted a 10-inch diameter scaled tube vertically into the model and squished down the fuselage in SketchUp. The plan was to have it laser-cut by Ponoko, which meant turning the design into flat pieces for them to cut. He ended up with 58 parts, many of them mirror images due to the symmetry of his design.

When the box from Ponoko arrived, [Aidan] was giddy. He was astonished at the quality of the pieces and found the plane very satisfying to build. But, he didn’t stop there. Using LayOut, he created a custom instrument cluster with reflections and shadows. The plane also has a Wii steering wheel, a motorized propeller, and of course, decals.

3D Printing A Daft Punk Helmet

September 6, 2014 by Matt Terndrup 6 Comments

Thanks to the awesome people over at Adafruit, you can now print your very own Daft Punk helmet! It is designed with a hollowed out shell and translucent material which allows for colorful LEDs to be inserted into the mask, which can light up just about any room. This makes the headset great for Maker Faire, household parties, and underground EDM raves.

The epic costume was inspired by the infamous electronic music duo from France who is known for hiding their identities behind intricate and complex masks. This version, however, is perfect for the Do-It-Youself builder on a budget assuming you have access to a Taz 3D printer through your hackerspace or a friend.

The entire helmet is 3D printed as one piece using a semi-transparent PLA filament with NeoPixel strips (144 pixel per meter) laid inside. It takes about 3 days to complete the printing job (assuming no errors arise during the process). After everything is finished, glossy gold paint is applied and the polished outcome is enough to turn some heads. Plus, this mask makes a great addition to any builder’s homemade ‘trophy’ collection.

A natural next step would be to add sensors that can detect bass vibrations. This could be used to change the colors of the display based on the music that is being played nearby. We’ve seen this sort of thing before on a few Daft Punk helmet builds that are far superior to this one. Of course the difference here is that the Adafruit version can be build in a reasonable amount of time by a mere mortal. Those other examples were life commitments as far as projects go!

Don’t forget to check out the video of this one in action after the break.

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Halloween Links: October 30th, 2013

October 31, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Happy Halloween from everyone at Hackaday! To help you enjoy the holiday here are a few festive links:

[Mike Kohn] whipped up a set of motion tracking eyeballs to make his decor extra creepy.

There’s not much to this jet-pack costume but the results are pretty amusing.

The eyes on [Tim Butler’s] skeleton prop don’t follow you around the room, but they do use a PIR sensor to light up the skull.

Speaking of skulls, [Tom] is using some real skulls as decorations. He also added lights where the eyeballs should be, but he is using a photoresistor and comparator to turn on some LEDs.

[Clark] built a Mecha Robot Warrior costume for his son. With all of those LED strips we think he’ll be pretty safe when crossing the street!

And finally, [Jesse] added a lot to his prop in order to produce a Sinister Joker. That’s Joker-as-in-cards and not as in Batman. It’s got an IR distance sensor as a trigger, with a motor to move the wrist, lights for the eyes, and a sound shield to give it a disturbing voice.

LED Costumes And Clothing

October 6, 2013 by Marsh 22 Comments

3ledCostume

Our tips line recently received an influx of wearable LED projects, both for casual and professional wear. [Elizabeth] and [Luis] have created the Lüme wearable collection, aimed at accessorizing by adding adjustable accent colors to jackets, t-shirts and dresses. The electronics are custom-made, built around an ATMega32u4, and each is Bluetooth enabled to interact with a user’s cell phone. From the phone, you can change colors, sequences, set up events, and even take advantage of an “inkdropper-style” feature that matches the color of the LEDs to any object you point your camera at.

[Michal’s] project is an entire suit for a dance and laser show entitled “Tron Dance”, which uses several RGB LED strips placed on key points of the wearer’s costume. It looks like [Michal] has intentionally avoided the joint areas to prevent any problems with breaks or bends, but still manages to place enough to cover the entire body. We aren’t sure what controls everything, but you can watch it go through various sequences and survive an onstage performance after the break.

Finally, in yet another kind of performance, magician [Kiki Tay] has built a jacket that’s overflowing with RGB LEDs. [Kiki] wanted wearable LED control that could be used in various situations without having to re-invent the wheel each time, so he developed his own board — the LED Magician: an Arduino-compatible solution. The board has 12 outputs channels, drives 50+ LEDs per channel and features 12 on-board LEDs that display a preview of the output. To make interactions user-friendly, [Kiki] has provided 32 built-in sequences and adjustable speeds that the user can program via 4 buttons on the board. If that isn’t enough control, there are some options for external control as well. The jacket itself runs off a hobby LiPo battery and is blindingly bright: stick around after the break for a video.

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Arc Reactor Replica Could Have Been Crafted In A Cave

June 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys No comments

Following in the footsteps of [Tony Stark] this Arc Reactor replica was hand crafted using almost no power tools. From what we can tell in his build gallery, a cordless drill was his only departure from using pure elbow grease.

[DJ Maller] started his build by cutting out a disc of acrylic for the base plate. While we might have reached for a hole saw, he grabbed a framing square and laid out a center point and square cuts on the stock. Kudos for his use of an awl (we often take the Luddite approach of hammer and nail) to make an impression for his compass point to rest in. After using a coping saw to rough out the shape he sands the round up to the line with the drill and a sanding wheel.

After drilling holes and inserting LEDs he begins to build up the replica piece by piece. What looks like a recessed handle for a sliding closet doors makes up the center. The spring-like copper coils was produced by wrapping wire around a pen then stretching to the desired shape. He added a bicycle spoke wrench wrapped with copper for some additional visual appeal before finishing the decoration off with some storm door clips.

[via Reddit]

Roomba And Virtual Walls Make Up This Theme Family Halloween Costume

November 15, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

It figures. You spend a ton of time making a cool set of costumes and then you can’t get your kid to pose for a picture. It’s okay though, we still get the point. This themed set of costumes dresses the little one as a Roomba vacuuming robot while mom and dad are suited up as virtual walls (modules that are used to keep the bot from falling down stairs, etc.). It’s fun and unique, but had it not been for some additional electronics this would have been relegated to a links post. For safety sake each costume was outfitted with a ring of LEDs. As a challenge, the lights were given the ability to sync up patterns with each other.

Each costume has a circular frame at the top with a set of RGB LED strings attached. To get them to display synchronized patterns an IR transmitter/receiver board was designed and ordered from OSHPark. Each costume has four of these modules so no matter where the wearers are facing it should not break communications. A demo of the synchronized light rings can be seen after the break

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Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot Costumes Make Party Conversation Awkward

October 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Don’t get us wrong, we love these Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot costumes. But as with that Samus Helmet it must make party conversation a bit weird. And how do you hold on to your beer? But you’ve got to commend [EyeHeartInk] and his friend for their commitment. Not only did they wear them to the party, but they spent two months building the things.

Pretty much everything was made from cardboard. All of it was hand cut with a box cutter and a hobby knife. Duct tape and glue were the adhesives of choice, and according to this thread a total of fifteen rolls of tape were used. The half spheres on the side of either helmet were molded from expanding spray foam inside a ping-pong ball which had been lopped in half. And of course there are a pair of LEDs for the eyes of each bot.

We usually try to link to other articles that are related, but it doesn’t look like we’ve seen this concept before So you’ll have to settle for this non-Halloween wristwatch controlled robot boxing game.