Simplified 2016 Proton Pack

thingiverse

I decided to build a Proton Pack from the new Ghostbusters movie for Halloween and after searching Thingiverse I found crydrk's proton pack which they made before the movie was released from the limited number of promotional photos available in 2015. It was amazingly accurate but in doing so it was made up of a lot of parts and would take a long time to print and assemble. I then decided to simplify it and make it easier to print and assemble. What has been done: Blended multi part boxes into single prints. Made objects solids instead of hollow. This means no inside perimeters so when using low infill it takes less material and less time. Replaced large inner dome parts with smaller quick prints. Added holders for el wire coil inside the center dome. Added gun mounts for side of pack and gun based on comicon pictures of actual prop. I also remodelled several other parts but it has been a few months since and I can't remember it all. I also corrected a few small things I noticed now that there was more info about the packs available. eg. moved lower yellow striped bar mounts to outside of angle iron end plates. I used an Arduino Pro Mini 5v 328 An old hipstreet mp3 player to add sound. A portable rechargeable cell phone speaker. A 5 metre red el wire kit from gearbest.com with 2aa battery pack included that I hacked to allow pwm control. A couple of white 5050 l.e.d.s from a length of l.e.d. strip lighting for the number displays. 9v battery and connector for the Arduino. Metal broom stick from the dollar store. Small push button for trigger. 1/2" copper pipe and assorted elbows and solder. Misc. wire, tubing, zip ties, screws, bolts, wood, acrylic sheet, paint and aluminium tape. When you multi click the button it turns the unit on/off. During the power on cycle the brightness of the el wire increases and the audio track of the start up sound plays. Once running the el wire pulses slowly. If you hold the button down the el wire strobes at a high rate. Unfortunately you can not see the strobing light in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wwBAudtkeg&feature=youtu.be&spfreload=10 I've included the Arduino sketch. Its a little hacky and the double click is a little finicky but worked and was easy to implement. The mp3 player would continuously loop and if paused would go into standby which you could not fix via software. To solve this I made a blank audio track 20 min long and once the start up sound played it would play the blank track. This meant if you triggered a start up again the Arduino would request the next/last track after the blank track which was actually the first track, the start up sound. It is currently slightly smaller than the dimensions mentioned on the internet of the actual prop. I believe it is about 10% smaller. At this scale the gun barrel is made out of a thin metal broom stick measuring about 19mm in diameter.