[prodestrian]

As part of the South Australia Ghostbusters setup at conventions (and other events) we have shelves setup with lab equipment, similar to what you'd find in Egon's lab at the firehouse. It adds another layer of fun and immersion, and flashing lights definitely get attention from passers-by.
I know some franchises have genuine oscilloscopes and vintage tech in their displays, but we can't always run mains power to our booth, and that old gear weighs a ton.

So here I'll showcase some of our custom gear in case it's useful/inspiring for others.

The Spectral Analyzer
I'm calling this first one the "Spectral Analyzer".

First up is this random box with flashing lights I saw in the background of GB1 while they're first interviewing Dana:


Here's a brief look at the animation, which is essentially a couple of dots bouncing from left to right:


I have an old project box which I'm not using, so I measured and modeled up a faceplate in CAD, 3D printed it, then laser-cut a clear acrylic LED window for it:


I decided that having toggle switches and banana plug connectors would add interactivity (you can flip the switches or connect/disconnect cables while it's on display). The connectors aren't actually connected to anything, but I could wire them up in future potentially:


Inside there's just an old Arduino Uno with HT16K33 LED multiplexer to run the LEDs, with the four switches connected back to the Arduino:


To finish off the faceplate I added some window tinting to the back of the acrylic screen, then custom designed and printed a faceplate cover, which I then slightly weathered and glued to the front:



The actual code isn't too complex, it basically just has keeps track of up to four sets of bouncing dots (two on each side). Each dot goes from left to the middle and back again, and this is mirrored by another dot on the opposite side.
Each toggle switch activates/deactivates a dot from the animation, and each one has a starting offset position.
Additionally the more switches are enabled, the faster the animation runs.

To replicate the effect from the film, you need either Switch 1 + 3 or 2 + 4 enabled, but I quite like the effect that Switch 1 + 4 gives.

Here's a full demo of the electronics and the different animation modes:


The best part is the whole thing runs off a USB cable and draws 0.06A (60mA), so a cheap 5000mAh USB powerbank can run this for ~83hrs off a single charge.

I may add more functionality to this in future but for now we've successfully used this at many events, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

[The_Y33TER]

As part of the South Australia Ghostbusters setup at conventions (and other events) we have shelves setup with lab equipment, similar to what you'd find in Egon's lab at the firehouse. It adds another layer of fun and immersion, and flashing lights definitely get attention from passers-by.
I know some franchises have genuine oscilloscopes and vintage tech in their displays, but we can't always run mains power to our booth, and that old gear weighs a ton.

So here I'll showcase some of our custom gear in case it's useful/inspiring for others.

The Spectral Analyzer
I'm calling this first one the "Spectral Analyzer".

First up is this random box with flashing lights I saw in the background of GB1 while they're first interviewing Dana:


Here's a brief look at the animation, which is essentially a couple of dots bouncing from left to right:


I have an old project box which I'm not using, so I measured and modeled up a faceplate in CAD, 3D printed it, then laser-cut a clear acrylic LED window for it:


I decided that having toggle switches and banana plug connectors would add interactivity (you can flip the switches or connect/disconnect cables while it's on display). The connectors aren't actually connected to anything, but I could wire them up in future potentially:


Inside there's just an old Arduino Uno with HT16K33 LED multiplexer to run the LEDs, with the four switches connected back to the Arduino:


To finish off the faceplate I added some window tinting to the back of the acrylic screen, then custom designed and printed a faceplate cover, which I then slightly weathered and glued to the front:



The actual code isn't too complex, it basically just has keeps track of up to four sets of bouncing dots (two on each side). Each dot goes from left to the middle and back again, and this is mirrored by another dot on the opposite side.
Each toggle switch activates/deactivates a dot from the animation, and each one has a starting offset position.
Additionally the more switches are enabled, the faster the animation runs.

To replicate the effect from the film, you need either Switch 1 + 3 or 2 + 4 enabled, but I quite like the effect that Switch 1 + 4 gives.

Here's a full demo of the electronics and the different animation modes:


The best part is the whole thing runs off a USB cable and draws 0.06A (60mA), so a cheap 5000mAh USB powerbank can run this for ~83hrs off a single charge.

I may add more functionality to this in future but for now we've successfully used this at many events, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

This thing kicks ass, man! I love it.

[alphabeta001]

Why can't I like this post a 1000 times?! Seriously awesome idea, that I may have to copy for our tables.

[prodestrian]

Onto the next device...

Motorola Oscilloscope

This was a lucky find on eBay, someone was selling the front panel of a vintage Motorola Oscilloscope for a very reasonable price within Australia, so I jumped on it.


First thing's first, it needs an enclosure. I could probably have laser-cut something out of acrylic, but in the interests of keeping things lightweight and event-friendly, I decided to go with foamcore/foamboard:


I picked up some "vintage-looking" beige PU leather (pleather adhesive carseat cover I think) on eBay and made up a custom box to wrap around it. I used the original screw holes from the front panel to hold it in place, then lightly weathered it to roughly match the front panel's aged appearance:


The best part is that the whole thing flat-packs into a box for transport, and it weighs almost nothing despite looking like it's very heavy:


Next, the electronics.
For the screen I could have used an LCD displaying vintage computer graphics but I want this to be a cheap and low-power project, so I just went with a strip of addressable LEDs. I cut up an old plastic chopping board to act as a diffuser, then attached the LED strip behind it horizontally. Here's the test fit:


And how it looked from the front:


I was happy enough with that so I moved onto the red LED banks.
The front panel did come with red LEDs included, already mounted to a PCB. But they were going to be too difficult to work with, and they weren't as bright as I wanted. So I measured and cut some stripboard and soldered my own LEDs into place:


I used another HT16K33 board to run the red LEDs, soldered leads to the various toggle switches (and the potentiometer beneath the "screen"), hotglued the various components into place, and wired everything to an Arduino Nano.
Here's how that looks:


As you can see there are still switches and dials which aren't connected, and the sockets at the bottom aren't either. But those can be saved for future enhancements. The number keypad is also not currently attached to anything. At some stage I'd also like to add a backplate to protect all the wiring, but for now I'm just being careful when I pack/unpack this during events.

The final step was the code. I won't go into too much detail but here's what I implemented in a few hours of coding:

1. The "Batt" LED illuminates immediately when power is connected
2. Switch the Power to "On" illuminates the "AC" LED and makes the "Oven Ready" LED flash, and enables the other switches, as well as making the first bank of LEDs animate in a sort of "audio spectrum" style.
3. Flip the "Function" switch on to animate the second bank of LEDs in a random one-LED-at-a-time sequence
4. Do the same for the "Generate" switch on the third bank of LEDs
5. When both switches are on and all LED banks are active, the lower "Sig Lvl" LED illuminates
6. Flip the switch beneath the screen to activate the LED "oscilloscope" screen/animation
7. Use the knob beneath the screen to adjust the screen animation speed

And here's how all of that looks:


Future Enhancements
I'm not sure if/when I'll get to these, but most should hopefully be relatively low effort.

• Get all the remaining dials and switches connected to the Arduino
• Connect the keypad
• Make up some cables to connect additional devices into the oscilloscope (just for show, for now)
• Cut a round hole in the side of the foamcore enclosure and add a cooling fan
• Add a speaker and add sound effects (controllable by one of the switches with a dial for volume)
• Add a backplate to protect the electronics
• Figure out what to actually do with the other dials and switches (maybe turn some of the connectors into relay controllers so I can trigger external devices?)

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm open to suggestions.