User avatar
By gamera1968
#4846747
The lights look great. I have a feeling you'll be done in time for Halloween. :)
By propcicle
#4846865
Tonight I got all the cables, boards, batteries and speakers loaded into the pack. I decided to go with sticking everything in the "shell" since the wood is more sturdy than the traditional plastic shell.

Image

Big shoutout to FreekyGeeky for getting a vhook and shook parts to me on short notice. I had a problem mounting the vhook are since it really set up for a thinner shell mount. So I used some flat head roofing nails to mount to my gun block. My next pack will do this differently, but hey, this is my prototype pack.

Image

Got it buttoned up and everything is working pretty good. I think I'm going to parallel up a couple 9V batteries as one seems to drain pretty quick. My next light kit will use the 12V supply only and not need the 9V.

I get a video up tomorrow when there's more light but here's a quick shot of everything mounted. I still need to get the bumper finished.

Image

Still need to get the uniforms finished up in the next night or so.
twmedford23 liked this
By graboskyc
#4847022
I don't know what your voltage/amperage requirements are for this pack, but look into whether a USB battery pack you'd use to recharge your phone (like an Anker) will power everything. That is what I use with a Raspberry Pi/Trinket powered pack and it lasts 10+ hours and is rechargeable.
User avatar
By gamera1968
#4847040
Way to go and it looks good. Still need to mount the bumper and ion knob.

Congrats man! Here; you earned it. :crunch:
By propcicle
#4847190
Today's the day, so just a couple quick updates before scrambling to finish a few things up. The bumper is done! It was a Frankenstein of plastic, wood and bondo. I wasn't looking forward to building this and should have started earlier. First, I made the side rails:
Image

Then I duct taped the bottom and layered bondo inside to the correct height. I have figured out that bondo is a builders best friend as long as it's warm out.

Image

After painting, I ended up with this, which I wasn't happy with. The wood grains on the top really stood out and I even layered bondo on top of all this and sanded. I guess I sanded too much. I took the pack to work yesterday but left the bumper off to rework last night.

Image

I sanded it down and layered 2 or 3 more coats of paint on the top and it helped. Still not perfect but it's good enough to go for tonight.

Image

So the final product, all put together and ready to go tonight:

Image

More pictures and video later...
twmedford23 liked this
By propcicle
#4847236
Happy Halloween! Family costumes were a big hit passing out candy tonight. I worked on these up until 3:30 this evening. I figured out my light setup was having problems due to the Arduino being powered up all the time. I installed a reset push button that took care of the problem. So here where are all suited up.

Image

And a couple with my son...
Image

Image

So now I'm going to take a month off of building and start working on two more packs for next year, maybe a trap and a PKE meter. I'm already scoping out servos and thinking of how to do the electronics for the PKE. Hope everyone had a great Halloween.
twmedford23 liked this
By propcicle
#4847325
graboskyc wrote:I don't know what your voltage/amperage requirements are for this pack, but look into whether a USB battery pack you'd use to recharge your phone (like an Anker) will power everything. That is what I use with a Raspberry Pi/Trinket powered pack and it lasts 10+ hours and is rechargeable.
This is on my lessons learned list. Even with 2 9V batteries, I could tell that after 5 hours of playing around my lights were getting flakey. The use of 9V batteries goes back to starting with the original circuit that used a 9V battery with shift registers. I built that circuit 5 years ago and decided to use parts of it it the current design. Since the Arduino has a limited current output, I went with using the transistor triggers to turn them on and off.

The next go around will use the 12V battery for everything. This will force me to resize all my resistors, but I think I have some ideas to simplify the board layouts. The MarkII will start soon enough.
#4865762
So, I've been studying this pretty closely, and have a few questions, if you don't mind. I have a VERY rudimentary understanding of electronics, but I think I can get this working with a little help. You've got transistors running everything, do you know the type you used? If they aren't necessary, is there any need to change the code, or just correct the resistors and tie right in? You mention using 2 9v batteries, but I only see one batter connector in your photos, do you have one running the Arduino board and a separate battery running lights/sound? You've got the Speaker hooked up to a board that appears to have a heatsink and volume control, is this an amplifier? If so, can you link to your source? And finally you used the adafruit audiofx board, but I've already got an Uno shield, would this be something I could use without modifying the code you provided, or should I just get what you used? Thanks in advance for any help, and especially thank you for making your code available, it's the one thing that has been preventing me from completing my build...
#4866060
SheaClose,

Sorry for not seeing this. I've not kept up to date here like I thought I would this year.

These hand drawn schematics might help answer some questions.

Image

Image

First off, the transistors are needed with the Arduino Mega board. There is a 200mA (or so, don't recall the exact number) output limit for the Arduino board, and all these lights need more juice than that. To get around that, I'm using the transistors as switches. The Arduino sends a very low current to the transistor, which then closes the circuit using the 9V batteries as the power source. I used 2N4401 bi polar transistors as originally designed by Keith Marshall in a circuit from 2002.

In the drawing above replace the single 9V with 2 wires in parallel (+ to +, - to -). The power supply I picked up had a 5V (hooked to Arduino) and a 12V (hooked to the amplifier). The amp came from Amazon, DROK 12V 15 watt stereo amp.

I looked at using an Uno with a sound shield but didn't pursue. The Adafruit board was easy to setup. As far as code changes, I'm sending discrete signals to the Ada board that trigger the sounds to play. Some sounds are set up to loop, others to play once and revert to the power hum track.

Hopefully this helps.

Chad
#4866875
With the showing of Ghostbusters in the theatre tonight, my son and I suited up and went to the movies. Afterwards I wanted to get a better video of the pack electronics since there seems to be some interest in my Arduino code, so here's everything hooked up with fresh batteries.



Not completely perfect, but I think it does the job. Again, I fully recommend using one of the great sound kits available to save a lot of time and head scratchin'.
Hugo Santos liked this
#4893345
Great build! I suspect you'll get people looking at it years after you've done it. Like me. :)

Do you have a source for the LED bargraph? Everyone I find seems to be the wrong size...
#4899238
Gran Trabajo !!!! Tienes el codigo para arduino?? quiero empezar el mio

(Great job !!!! Do you have the code for arduino ?? I want to start mine)
Last edited by Kingpin on October 6th, 2017, 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.Reason: Added translation
By propcicle
#4900519
Hugo Santos wrote:Gran Trabajo !!!! Tienes el codigo para arduino?? quiero empezar el mio

(Great job !!!! Do you have the code for arduino ?? I want to start mine)
Sorry Hugo, been a while since I've been on here. Too many other projects going on. The latest version of my Arduino code is near the bottom of page 2 of this thread.

Regarding your IM about drawings, the ones I have posted here are the only ones I put together. The best way to figure out the circuitry is to look at the input and output channel definitions in the Arduino code. I tried to annotate everything so I could troubleshoot when things didn't work. I hope you're able to get your pack up and going. I'd still recommend picking up a light and sound kit - I spent weeks getting this code to work, and it still has some buggy parts if left running for a long time.
Hugo Santos liked this
By Hugo Santos
#4901189
Termine la noche de haloween y mi hijo estaba feliz de usarlo, y yo mas por ver como disfrutaba su proton pack que contrui con mucho cariño, eres el mejor propcicle!!! tu código también el mejor de todos,
si con un poco de falla al dejarlo encendido por largo tiempo, pero todos felices por verlo!!!

Image
propcicle liked this
By propcicle
#4901312
Hugo Santos wrote:Termine la noche de haloween y mi hijo estaba feliz de usarlo, y yo mas por ver como disfrutaba su proton pack que contrui con mucho cariño, eres el mejor propcicle!!! tu código también el mejor de todos,
si con un poco de falla al dejarlo encendido por largo tiempo, pero todos felices por verlo!!!

Image
Hugo - glad to hear that this thread helped you out. This site was a great resource to me and I’m glad to have helped someone else. The coding with all the MILLIs timers to probably the root of the issue when left on for extended periods. I wired up a push button switch to the RESET input on the arduino that would reboot it when I needed to get the sequencing back in line.

Let’s see a picture of your pack in action.
Hugo Santos liked this

I'd really like to see the new t-shirt unlocks t[…]

Hey and welcome

My Little Pony/Ghostbusters crossover done by my d[…]

Great work identifying the RS Temperature Control […]