[bdodds]

Hello,

Long time fan, saw the movie first run as an impressionable 10 year old, and now my 8 year old is all about this movie - helped in no small part by the new Lego set and the movie re-release, and an 8 year old's imagination. Hoping to see it in the theaters this week with the kids, son 8 and daughter 6.

Now the kids are all about going as them for halloween (could we not see this coming?) so I'm researching bashing together some decent costumes (again, saw that coming). I'm handy with Arduinos and the like, we'll see what I can come up with after trawling the forums. Saw quite a bit so far, looking forward to reinventing the wheel.

Thanks for the resource, I'll post anything I do that is of any value.

brian
Leesburg, VA

[Kingpin]

Welcome aboard, Brian. You should find most of the info you're after here.

[Fritz]

[bdodds]

OK! About 2 weeks ago I hit this project hard. I'm making them for my kids, 6 and 8, so the packs had to be light, so I made it all out of insulating foam. I used Mod Podge to seal it, then sprayed on Plasti-Dip. You can see where I skimped on the Mod Podge, as the Plasti-Dip ate away the foam.

This isn't close to a replica or anything, I just wanted something the kids would love and would pass in the general public as a decent job. I scratchbuilt everything except for the Heavy Props audio board. This is how I broke it down:

Pack contains an Arduino to drive the bar graphs and red lights, 9V batteries stacked in parallel, 3V AAs for the audio board, amp, speaker from an old set of computer speakers. I put the speaker inside a plastic tube for some resonance then glued the back to a foam pad which was jammed/glued to one end of the tube to allow it to vibrate the pack and pull out the bass some.

Thrower contains the audio board since the switches are all up there, an Arduino nano to drive the bargraph and the other various lights, and a high-power RGB led in the barrel.

I run a CAT5 cable from the pack to the thrower for several reasons, first it turns out the smallest number of conductors I'd need to complete my circuit the way I wanted happened to be 8: 2 for 9V to the thrower, 2 for 3V to the thrower, 2 for audio from the thrower, and 2 for 9V back from the thrower. I use a Neutrik RJ45 jack on the thrower to connect the cable up and disconnect it. When it's disconnected, the power is completely cut, so there's no battery drain at rest.

When the CAT5 is plugged in, the amp is powered on and the audio board is powered on and a small pilot light is lit. When the first switch is thrown, power is applied to the arduino in the pack and the arduino in the thrower. The second switch fires up the audio and lights the internal light which you can't really see much with. The lower right pushbutton activates the stream, and the upper right pushbutton sets off the theme song, which the kids insisted upon. I had lofty goals but having only 2 weeks really made me cut corners, and trial and mostly error resulted in plans B, C, D, Q, Z, etc. I think some things I was on plan ZQ.

Anyhow, I've got pictures, but I'm tired, having finished this JUST under the wire. Failure was not an option this year.