OK, so I’m finally getting beyond cutting out the motherboard on my new pack build. I’m currently pricing materials/components.
I have a question for everyone. I’m having a really hard time figuring out how to do the bumper. I can’t afford one of the nice resin casts, and I’d rather not try to cut it out of wood. I saw the paper build, and am considering modifying that. Any other suggestions for a budget bumper?
Depends on your skills and how durable you want it to be. Foamcore, MDF, styrene, etc. are all viable for a bumper. None of those are hard wood, but will require cutting, of course.
Throwing chicken made a wonderful bumper out of scratch. It was really good. check it out. My First [real] Proton Pack - Proton Packs - GBFans.com
Awesome suggestions, I think I might try one like ThrowingChicken’s.
Next question, I’ve had to go with split loom, since the shop sold out of the split-less and I can’t find it elsewhere in reasonable quantities, so what are people’s suggestions for sealing it up? I was thinking I might try to heat it up enough to melt it together. Is that doable, or would I be better off just gluing it?
The screen-used packs used split loom, with the occasional zip-tie or strip of electrical tape. The split really isn’t a big deal. However, I’d advise against trying to glue it; you’ll only end up with a messy seam that will easily break apart on you.
Ah, I guess I hadn’t looked closely enough at the reference photos to notice that, thanks.
I’m going to take a little creative license with my pack, and I’d like to make the crank shaft into a master on/off switch for my electronics. I’m looking for a rotary switch (2 or 3 position) that has a nice, satisfying “thunk” when flipped. Anyone know of a good one?
If you want to have splitless loom you can always buy some kind of pond hose. Those come in different sizes. Just get the one that fits your pack best.
I think, this would be the right kind of pond hose, but tends to be too much for just one pack:
Thanks for the info. I already got the split loom, though. It’s not a big deal, I’ll make it work.
Alright, I went out and bought most of the physical components on Sunday. I’m not really expecting to have this ready in time for Halloween, so I’m going to try to take my time and make it look good. Got electronics for an Arduino light/sound setup on order. I’m going to start construction sometime this week, try to get an hour or two of work a day. I’ll take progress pics as I go and post them here. Wish me luck!
So, I finally got started yesterday, and I think I’ve made some decent progress. I spent almost 9 hours yesterday, and about 7 today working. So, down to business.
Some vinyl hose I found at Home Depot. I’m going to use it for the tubing.
I tried dyeing it with RIT, but it turns out that doesn’t stick to vinyl AT ALL. Whoops.
Vinyl spray paint (meant for touching up the interior of your car) works BEAUTIFULLY.
A quick run to the dollar store yielded some good finds.
For the cyclotron, the diameter at the top happens to be exactly the right size.
It’s a little tall, so…
Ah, much better.
It also had this annoying dip in the middle, so I cut it out, backed it with some styrene from a for rent sign, and patched it with Bondo.
Saw these and realized they were a far simpler, cheaper solution to the Ion Rod. Cut them to size (bit of work with a dremel), hit them with some brass paint and…
Voila!
Angle brackets as a support for my custom-made bumper, which will be made from…
this. This did not come from the dollar store, it was about $3 at Home Depot. It’s a plastic/foam moulding, and it’s about 8 feet long. It’s bendy, but not as flexible as I was hoping, so it can’t just be bent into shape. I’m going to cut it down into sides and middle, held together by the brackets.
I got some plastic quick-connect elbows for the tubing, but I didn’t like them not matching the brass connectors I got for elsewhere, so…
I painted them with the brass paint, since I had it for the Ion Rod anyway.
I didn’t want to have to deal with finding the actual resistors, so I decided to make my own.
The piece on the left is a small bit I cut off of a ribbed drawer liner I found at Home Depot. On the right is a bit of tubing I have left over from my leg hose. By their powers (and some Goop) combined, I have…
Something that looks kind of like the Dale Resistor. Cut up another pegboard hook, Goop it into the center, and…
Tada! It’s kind of hard to tell from the pictures, but it is flat on the bottom, I formed the lining into a sort of C-shape around the tubing.
Here we have the PVC injectors drying.
Here they are assembled, with brass connectors attached for the tubing.
I cut out the top cover for the sync-gen.
I liked Garree’s idea for the electrical boxes, but, alas they were too big. Trusty dremel can take care of that! Open sides will be covered with pieces of styrene. Those rings in the picture are the “washers” around the cyclotron lights.
Here’s the bit of circuit for the lights in the Power Cell. Two shift registers on the right, so I can control all those with only 3 pins on the Arduino. I was doing a test fit, and I may have to remove one of the LEDs, which may be more accurate, anyway. I currently have 16 (partly because coding for that is slightly easier :p). I think there’s only supposed to be 15 (at least, that’s what I seemed to count in the reference pics I could find), but I couldn’t seem to find that number anywhere.
EDIT: OK, I found it, it is indeed 15. Looks like that extra light is coming off.
So, I got my Arduino in. It was behaving really screwy, and I spent the last 3.5 hours trying to figure out what was wrong, only to discover that the problem was simply that one of my wires is broken.
Connections ok just re-solder or check everything on the proto board but the random shorts in wires… the worst! Are you writing your own arduino code?
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More or less. I’m using a wave shield from Adafruit; looked at their examples to see how to code for that, and looked at the shift register tutorial on the Arduino website for use in controlling all the LEDs. I’m following a lot of the ideas in those, but it’s more-or-less my own implementation.
Hi Qantravon
If you look in my One week pack thread you’ll find code for Arduino pack lights and sounds and some ideas for building the 595’s and an amp on strip-board.
Good luck with the build. 
I did see your thread, Martinus. If I can’t get my code to work, I’ll probably use yours. But, I’d like to give it a good shot myself, first. Thanks for the info, though.
Additionally, I’m using one of these: Amazon.com
Got it from Woot a while back. I’m going to modify it so it can be turned on via switch.
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Spent a couple of hours debugging (after getting a spool of good wire) earlier. Sounds are now up and running. I’ll connect the lights and see how they fare sometime this weekend.
Does anyone know if the Wave Shield is capable of playing multiple audio files simultaneously? I’d like to get the overheat alarm from the video game to start going off after 10 seconds or so of constant firing. So far, my attempts have ended up with only the alarm playing, no proton stream.
As far as I remember it reads sounds sequentially so only one sound can be played at any time. You could splice the overheat onto the end of the firing sound.
Yeah, that was my other option. Overlay the audio files in Audacity to create a new clip that’s the firing sound + overheat.
OK, so I’ve run into a problem with the lights. I have a setup for two chained shift registers to run the powercell lights, but they don’t respond properly. I give the arduino power, the lights attached to the shift registers will do some random flashes, and then pick a configuration, seemingly at random (usually all on, but occasionally with just a subset on) that it will just lock in. I’ve tried going back and uploading just the most basic shift register examples, but it doesn’t help. The lights will occasionally flash/reconfigure themselves when new code is uploaded, as well. I’ve checked multiple times that everything is wired correctly, an as far as I can tell, they are. Anyone have any suggestions?
