Stylophone 5 – Modernizing The Best Of The 1968 Hardware

November 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

We love looking in on [Simon Inns’] projects, and this must be one of his very best. This is the fifth version of his MIDI-capable stylophone. The gist of the control system is that a conductive keyboard (made of a tinned PCB) is played by making a connection with the tip of a wired stylus — hence the name. The idea comes from the original 1968 Dubreq Stylophone hardware, but [Simon’s] not just using the idea. He has his own working original and used it to reverse engineer the circuit design.

When it first came out, the Stylophone had three flavors for Bass, Standard, and Treble audio ranges. They differed only in the choices of passive components used in the circuit. [Simon] built the variations into his design so that they are selectable on one unit. This most recent version connects via USB, allowing you to control MIDI software. But unlike his first four iterations, this also offers MIDI-In capabilities. This makes it possible to control tuning, vibrato, and to drive the Stylophone circuitry from the computer interface. Get a good look at that, and a nostalgic Portal moment, by watching the clip after the break.

If you’re looking for an easier build, you might try this analog standalone version of the Stylophone.

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Build Your Own Portal Turret In 150 Easy Steps

October 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

If there were a contest for the most thorough step-by-step project log [Kurt] would the champion. He recently a posted 150 step build log for his fleece-covered Portal turret project. If you can get over the need to click-through 30 pages of steps, there’s a lot to like about this project.

First, what it doesn’t do: The Turret doesn’t split up the middle and fire bullets at you. This is a relief, but the fact that it’s not lethal doesn’t mean it just sits there looking interesting. It can detect movement, it knows when you pick it up, and it can tell when it’s been knocked over. All of these interactive sensory inputs are used to playback various sound bytes from the Portal games, making it a great piece of desk art for those working in geek-centric offices. See for yourself in the video after the break.

The body itself is a food storage container which houses the barebones Arduino and Adafruit Wav shield. As near as we can tell, a PIR sensor detects movement, and leaf switches on the legs tell it when it’s been picked up or tipped over. But we only made a cursor examination of the assembly steps so we might be missing something.

If you’re not into the turrets, maybe this potato is more up your alley.

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The Weighted Companion Cube Will Never Threaten To Stab You And, In Fact, Is A Subwoofer

September 10, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

From the techPowerUp! forums comes an awesome weighted companion cube subwoofer built by the metonymical user named [Cube].

This build started off as a coffee table that was to have an oval glass top (no word if the edges were going to be blue or orange). The guts of the cube are taken from a 400 Watt sub. As any good sub builder would, [Cube] kept the air volume and port tuning of the donor box.

We’ve seen a companion cube sub before that featured EL wire for a ‘glowing cube’ effect, but [Cube] may have taken things a little too far by including glowing rings on each side of the cube. The rings lit by 2,500 LEDs mounted on pieces of perspex and wired point-to-point. While [Cube] claims he’s ‘not a electronics guru,’ he certainly has a lot of patience to assemble those lights.

Check out [Cube]’s YouTube build video after the link. Credit to [Todd] for sending this one in.

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This GLaDOS Potato Is A Lie

August 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Why settle for virtual reality when you can make the digital world into reality? [Josh] wanted to have a GLaDOS potato accompany him through life when not playing Portal 2. He set to work to see what kind of replica prop he could come up with. Judging from the image above, and demo video after the break, he nailed it right in the spud.

There’s no worrying about rot. The potato and a few parts were molded from Sculpey and baked in the oven. Since the fake spud is hollow in the center it’s easy to hide the bits that make it talk. An old MP3 player was loaded with quotes from the game, and plays them back via an LM386 audio amplifier circuit and a speaker hidden below the electronic eye. The eye is lit by five yellow LEDs which are also tied into the amplifier to make them blink and fade with the intensity of the audio signal.

A paint job and the nails and wire really make the build look just right. Now [Josh] needs to host a geek-themed Halloween party so he can really show this off.

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Portal Puppet Probably Won’t Kill Us

August 11, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

This incredibly detailed puppet of the Wheatley from Portal was sent into us, and we a so very happy that we’re not writing about a GLaDOS build right now.

Hewn from florist foam and covered Wonderflex and Apoxie Sculpt, Wheatley pretty much tows the line as far as cosplay and prop builds go. What makes Wheatley interesting is his movement mechanism – he’s actually a hand-controlled puppet. Portal quotes come a small sound module that plays 10 Wheatley quotes. The control system has ten buttons and allows for the display of a lot more emotion than we would expect from a talking sphere. We really like the completely manual solution to an articulated robot eyeball – a really great, simple solution to a complex problem.

Like the portal turret and the adorable and friendly companion cube, we’re really impressed with the build quality of Wheatley. Yet again we’re left wondering why Valve doesn’t license some awesome toys like their office sentry.

Check out the intelligence dampening sphere in action after the break.

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DIY Portal Turret Is… Looking Pretty Good.

May 10, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 19 Comments

[Ryan Palser] wrote in to tell us about his Portal Turret. [Ryan] set about making this Portal 1 style turret by first carving a Styrofoam form, bondo and waxing then casting molds of the various components. Anyone interested in mold making (like us) should check out all the pictures and comments in the stream. The turret’s camera lens style eye has some excellent detail including a laser cut aperture with text inlay. A couple LEDs behind the eye assembly provide the signature red glow and evidently [Ryan] also fitted the little guy with a red laser. An internal Arduino (Incident Resolution Chip?) takes ques from a PIR sensor mounted in one of the turret’s arms to play one of 17 sound clips through a sparkfun MP3 player shield. In order to fight repetition the sound module runs through a playlist of the 17 tracks then shuffles it before playing through again. Theme music can also be spammed by pressing a button in the back of the motion sensing arm. The turret can be battery powered or plugged into a wall socket for constant operation. All that’s missing are the Aperture-Brand Resolution Pellets. We would love to see this integrated with some similar turret projects previously featured here.

Are you still there? We have more Aperture Science stuff including a Sentry Turret, Weighted Companion Cube, and even a portal shirt. If you are interested in more model making check out the spectacular Daft Punk helmet build from a little while back.

A Weighted Companion Cube Worth Saving From The Incinerator

May 4, 2011 by Mike Nathan 19 Comments

companion_cube

It’s honestly sad that Valve has not released any official Portal-related items to the masses, as a market for them clearly exists. As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”, and [Jamie] needed a Weighted Companion Cube in the worst way.

Actually he constructed his Companion Cube in order to test out some modifications and upgrades he performed on his homebrew CNC Mill. Judging by how the cube turned out, and the fact that he was able to keep tolerances within .005”, we would say that his mill is working just fine.

The cube was designed in Solidworks, and passed through the BobCAD plugin to generate the GCode for the mill. The base of the cube was machined out of a 3” solid block of aluminum, hollowed out on one side to give him access to the cube’s innards. He milled out heart shaped openings on each side, covering them with frosted Lexan.

He added a BlinkM to the mix, mounting it on the cover plate he milled for the open side of the cube. Once lit it cycles through several colors, including the pinkish tone anyone who has played Portal is quite familiar with.

We would say that it’s a great job, but it doesn’t do his work justice – it’s absolutely stunning. We’re not just saying that because we want one, though we do want one…badly.