Replica Fallout Terminal

March 25, 2017 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

If you’ve played Fallout 4, you’re familiar with the wall-mounted terminals in the game. They’ve got a post-apocalyptic aesthetic and the glowing green screen that calls out to anyone that grew up with computers and hacker movies from the 80s and 90s. Remember the first time you set your command line text to green? Don’t be embarrassed, we were all young once.

[PowerUpProps] liked the Fallout terminal so much they developed a replica. It’s a build that leans heavily on maker standards, a Raspberry Pi and 3D printing form the basis of the terminal. With ready access to such powerful tools, it makes starting such a project much more approachable. The key to the success of this build is the fine attention to detail in the finishing – the paint job looks incredible, and when photographed appropriately, it could be mistaken for ~~the real thing~~ an in-game screenshot.

An interesting touch is the use of a dark green acrylic window in front of the LCD, which gives the display a tinted hue. We’d like to see this compared with a clear glass window with a classic fishbowl curve to it, combined with greening up in software. The creator readily admits that this looks great at the command line, but is somewhat of a letdown when using the GUI.

Perhaps the only thing the prop build could use is some sort of user interface — the keyboard is only 3D printed and there’s no mouse or other pointing device included. There are some creative solutions to this problem, which we often see in other Fallout projects, like the ever popular Pip-Boy replica builds.

[Thanks to Sjoerd for the tip!]

Roam The Wastelands With This Fallout-Themed Mini Geiger Counter

March 16, 2017 by Dan Maloney 46 Comments

For anyone who has worked with radioactive materials, there’s something that’s oddly comforting about the random clicks of a Geiger counter. And those comforting clicks are exactly why we like this simple pocket Geiger counter.

Another good reason to like [Tim]’s build is the Fallout theme of the case. While not an item from the game, the aesthetic he went for with the 3D-printed case certainly matches the Fallout universe. The counter itself is based on the popular Russian SBT-11A G-M tubes that are floating around eBay these days. You might recall them from coverage of this minimalist Geiger counter, and if you were inspired to buy a few of the tubes, here’s your chance for a more polished build. The case is stuffed with a LiPo pack, HV supply, and a small audio amp to drive the speaker. The video below shows it clicking merrily from a calibration source.

We can see how this project could be easily expanded — a small display that can show the counts per minute would be a great addition. But there’s something about how pocketable this is, and just the clicking alone is enough for us.

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Retrotechtacular: [Walt] Builds A Family Fallout Shelter

November 9, 2016 by Jenny List 114 Comments

In the 1950s it seemed likely that the Cold War could at any minute take a turn for the worse, and we might all be consumed in the fiery conflagration of nuclear war. Fortunately neither the leaders on our side of the fence nor those on the other were the dangerous unpredictable lunatics their opponent’s propaganda might have portrayed them as, and instead we continued on our way uneasily gazing at each other over the Iron Curtain.

For civilian America, the Government created a series of promotional efforts to prepare them for the effects of nuclear war and equip them with the means to survive. Some of them like the infamous “Duck and cover” film seem quaint and woefully inadequate when viewed with several decades hindsight, but others tried hard to equip the 1950s American with what looked like the real means to survive.

Our film below the break today is part of one such effort. The Family Fallout Shelter was a booklet produced in 1959 by the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, and it described in detail the construction of a series of fallout shelters of differing designs. There was a concrete underground shelter, a partially buried twin-wall shelter with infill, and the one shown in the film, a basement fallout shelter made from concrete blocks. Our narrator and protagonist is [Walt], a capable bespectacled middle-aged man in a check shirt who takes us through the shelter’s construction.

We start with him giving some friends a tour of the finished shelter, and we see its cozy furnished interior with bunk beds and all mod cons. We’re told it would make a useful extra spare bedroom, or a darkroom. Then we flash back to construction as [Walt] takes us through all the steps required to build your own basement shelter. As he says, it’s a project that could be attempted by almost anyone, and what follows is a pretty good introduction to basic bricklaying. We can’t help being concerned about the security of those unmortared roof blocks in the face of a Tsar Bomba, but fortunately they were never put to the test. We do find it amusing that this is presented by the National Concrete Masonry Association — how better to boost sales than get the populace to build extra brick walls in every home?

The film and booklet provide a fascinating window into some of the culture surrounding preparations for nuclear war in the early Cold War era. The ideas that it would be survivable, and that two weeks in a home-made fallout shelter would be sufficient to ensure that civilians would be safe are in stark contrast to the then-secret deep shelters and long-term survival plans that the governments of the time created for themselves. It would be interesting to know how many of these home shelters were built, and how many survive. Did you ever spend a night in a basement spare bedroom with a blast wall?

We’ll leave you with the film’s closing words from the Director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization.

“No home in America is modern without a family fallout shelter. This is the nuclear age.“

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Nuka-Cola PC Case Really Glows

August 14, 2016 by Cameron Coward 5 Comments

It’s hard to imagine a video game series with more potential for cool prop projects than Fallout. The Fallout series has a beautiful and unique art style that is chock full of potential for real-world builds. Pip-Boys, Fat Mans, and power armor projects abound. But, most of these projects are purely aesthetic: something to stick on a shelf and show off to your fellow geeks.

[themitch22] wanted something he could actually use, and what does a geek use more than their computer? Thus, he set out to create a Fallout-themed PC case, and a Nuka-Cola vending machine was the perfect choice for inspiration.

The attention to detail on the build is astounding, with a functional display (powered by a Raspberry Pi), glowing Nuka-Cola Quantum bottles, and weathering to make it feel like it has survived a nuclear apocalypse. He was also kind enough to post pictures of the entire process, which shows how all of the parts were 3D-printed and assembled.

Need some more Fallout goodness to inspire you next build? Check out this amazing Pip-Boy replica we featured last year.

[thanks to Nils Hitze for the tip]

Fallout 4 Gets Logic Gates, Is Functionally Complete

June 22, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

Fallout logic. This is literally called Fallout logic. This is far more confusing than it should be.

Fallout 4, the latest tale of post-apocalyptic tale of wasteland wanderers, got its latest DLC yesterday. This add-on, Contraptions Workshop, adds new objects and parts to Fallout 4‘s settlement-building workshop mechanic. This add-on brings more building pieces, elevators, and most importantly logic gates to Commonwealth settlements.

The Fallout logic gates are used in conjunction with electric generators, lights, and automated sentries used to build settlements. Although a simple NAND would do, there are several types of logic gates including AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR.

The in-game explanation for these gates is very, very weird. AND, OR, and XOR “transmit power or not depending on the combination of power to their inputs”. NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR are apparently different, “only transmitting power if their inputs are connected directly to the output of other logic gates”. The reason for this arbitrary distinction between different sets of gates is currently unknown except to a few programmers and project leaders at Bethesda. It should be noted {AND, OR, XOR} is not functionally complete.

With implementations of logic gates in video games comes some very interesting if useless applications. Already Fallout 4 has light boxes, allowing for huge animated billboards. Fallout speakers, the wasteland’s equivalent of Minecraft’s note block, can be used to play simple melodies. You can do anything with a NAND, so we would expect automated, sequenced versions of animated billboards and monophonic synthesizers to appear in short order.

Functional completeness can add a lot to a game. Since Minecraft added redstone logic to the game, we’ve seen some very, very impressive block-based builds. The Minecraft CPU generally regarded as being the first, most complete CPU took about three months to design and build. This build didn’t use later additions to the redstone toolbox like repeaters, pistons, and the now-cheaty command blocks.

Fallout Inspired Cellphone Wristwatch

May 6, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 13 Comments

[Mr. Volt] mentions that some of the commenters on his videos believed that he shouldn’t be making large, retro computer themed communicator watches. He believes they are wrong, naturally we are compelled to agree with him.

In his latest build he has produced a rather well-built and large cell-phone watch. After the untimely death of an Apple II cellphone watch, he decided to up his game and make one that could take more of a beating. The case is 3D printed, which is hard to believe given the good finish. He must have spent a long time sanding the prints. Some wood veneer for looks and aluminum panels for strength complete the assembly.

The electronics are a Teensy and a GSM module. It looks like he places calls by calling the operator since the wrist communicator only has four inputs: a red button, a blue button, and a momentary switch rotary encoder.

The communicator appears to work really smoothly, and it would certainly draw attention to him were he to wear it anywhere other than the Wasteland. Video after the break.

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Printing Objects Directly From Fallout 4

December 20, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 40 Comments

Fallout 4 was released about a month ago, and although we don’t have a ‘took an arrow to the knee’ meme like Bethesda’s last game, there are ample opportunities for cosplay and printing out deathclaws and mirelurks on a 3D printer. How do you turn files hidden away in a game’s folders into a real, printed object? It’s actually pretty easy and [Angus] is here to tell you how.

The files for Fallout enemies and items can be readily accessed with the Bethesda Archive Extractor, although this won’t give you files that a 3D printer can understand. You’ll get a .NIF file, and NifSkope can convert the files found in the Fallout archives to an .OBJ file any 3D modeling program can understand. The next step from there is taking the .OBJ file into Meshmixer and fixing everything with Netfabb. After that, it’s off to the printer.

[Angus] printed his model of a Deathclaw in ABS in multiple parts, gluing them together with a little bit of acetone. This didn’t go exactly as planned; there were some contaminants in the ABS that turned into a white film on the black ABS. This was ultimately fixed with XTC-3D, the 3D print coating everyone is experimenting with.

The finished product is a solid yellow but completely smooth 3D model of one of the toughest enemies in Fallout 4. The only thing left to do is paint the model. The best way to proceed at this point is probably doing what model builders have been doing for decades – an airbrush, and hundreds of tiny bottles of paint. [Angus] is opening up his YouTube comments for suggestions, and if you have a better idea he’s looking for some help.
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