We’ve just been shown a creation that definitely belongs on the list of impressive videogame replicas. This BR55 rifle built by [B Squared Mfg] not only looks exactly like its in-game Halo 2 counterpart, it’s also a fully functional firearm chambered in 5.56. The attention to detail even brings us a game-accurate electronic ammo counter.
Unfortunately, the only information we have on the weapon currently is the video below. But he does at least go into detail about the practical aspects: caliber choice, the arduous journey of bolt carrier sourcing, and how the ammo counter works.
Each magazine has a potentiometer built into it to detect the number of rounds loaded, but there’s a bit of trickery involved. In the real world, there’s no way a magazine this size could hold the 36 rounds of ammunition depicted in the game, so for each shot fired, the counter subtracts three. It takes a little imagination, but this way it looks as close to the game version as possible.
There will be no published files due to legal concerns, but there’s nothing you couldn’t build yourself, as long as said legal concerns are sorted out for yourself. Depending on where you live, you might have to settle for building a Gauss gun in the same frame, we’ve even seen slimmer ones done commercially. Whatever you build, make sure you store it in a way others can’t access it easily — not all gun safes pass this test.
We won’t delve much in to the pros and cons of the device, other than mention two features which have the potential to creep out most folks. The device has a pair of microphones, which listen to the “tone” of your voice and report on your emotional state. The other is its use of your phone via the companion app, to take photos of you, preferably dressed in your undergarments. Your front, back and side photos get uploaded to Amazon servers, get converted to a 3D model, and then downloaded back to your phone. Amazon mentions that the photos are never retained and deleted from their servers once your 3D model is transferred back to the phone. Amazon’s ML algorithms then calculate your body fat percentage. More worryingly, the app offers a slider which you can move to see how you will “look” if you have higher or lower body fat percentages.
His plan was to identify as many parts as he could, but he wasn’t very successful, and managed to identify just a few — the two MEMS microphones, two temperature sensors and the LED driver on the flex PCB, and the photo-diodes, 6-axis IMU, battery charger and flash memory on the main board. The board has an uncommon 5-layer stack up, with the centre layer being ground. PCB de-layering is a time consuming process and requires a lot of patience, but in the end, he was able to get a pretty good result. He found some oddities in the track layout and was able to identify some of the more common connections to the I2C bus and between the micro-controller and its memory. He also located several test points which seem promising for a second round of investigations. Sometime in the future, he plans to get another Halo and have a go at it using the JTAGulator and GoodFET.
