Arc Reactors And Animatronics

[Honus]

So I'm new here but I have to say the creativity on this board is most impressive. I figured since there were so many Iron Man builds going on I'd see if I could maybe lend a helping hand. I previously wrote up an arc reactor tutorial on Instructables- http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-Iron-Man-Arc-Reactor/



You can download it as a PDF here- http://www.4shared.com/document/Q01Tv-mH/Make-an-Iron-Man-Arc-Reactor.html





I'm currently working on a kit/simplified build that will improve upon my latest reactor in the pic- that reactor was built last year before IM 2 was released so I didn't have a ton of info to go on at the time. The new one will be much better.



I'm also working on some animatronics- currently building an animatronic Stargate Horus helmet and I'm building the animatronic systems for a friend's Predator costume. Just waiting for him to get me the finished backpack- it'll be killer when it's done and there will be a full tutorial as well.



There's an early video of the Pred cannon here-

The other project I've been working on is a small desktop 3D printer- it'll be super cool for making smallish movie props and such- figured maybe you guys could use something like it as it would come in pretty handy. I've started a build log here: http://multi-bot.blogspot.com



If anyone has any questions or anything just let me know and I'll be happy to help out as best as I can!



[attachment=16781:NewArcReactor.jpg]

 

[IroniumStudios]

dude, wow

 

[Lonewolf Armorer]

Welcome and WOW that is some great work.

 

[old school dude]

I might try and make my own, just because they look so cool.

 

[Honus]

Thanks guys! I started making props several years ago- mostly Ghostbuster stuff, MIB blasters, Green Lantern rings, etc. Fun stuff but mostly just for Halloween. I feel like I'm finally now getting the hang of it so I'm steadily trying to improve my work (when I have the time!)



Here's some early stuff-

[attachment=16782rotonpack4.JPG]

[attachment=16783:Weldedgunbodya.jpg]

[attachment=16784:Trap1.jpg][attachment=16785:GLglowring.jpg]

 

[darkstein]

cool stuff, can you upload the arc reactor tutorial to 4 shared i dont have a premium indestructible account

 

[dung0beetle]

HONUS ROCKS!!! I made my first helmet based on your Boba Fett helmet tut on Instructables. Good to have you here!

 

[agbates]

That predator gun setup would be the perfect way to run war machine's turret. Can't wait for the tutorial on that.

 

[Honus]

cool stuff, can you upload the arc reactor tutorial to 4 shared i dont have a premium indestructible account

I'll have to figure out how to do that.

 

[Honus]

HONUS ROCKS!!! I made my first helmet based on your Boba Fett helmet tut on Instructables. Good to have you here!

Thanks! It's good to be here- I've checked out some work here from time to time and have continually been impressed so I figured I should join.



That bucket was done long before Pepakura- the work I see now just blows it away...

 

[Honus]

That predator gun setup would be the perfect way to run war machine's turret. Can't wait for the tutorial on that.

You sir are reading my mind.



The Pred cannon is armed by pressing your index finger- that raises the cannon into the firing position and turns on the laser sight. Then you look around and the cannon follows. Now rock your index finger back to push the second button and the cannon fires (LED plus sound.) I have multiple other Pred sounds programmed into the sound board as well- they're just loaded to a SD card. To lower the cannon you need to look forward and down and then release your index finger. It's not a perfect system as it doesn't follow your head movements perfectly but it gets the job done. It's a complicated little bugger to make it all fit and replicate the motions of the original.



The trick with War Machine is the weight of the cannon and the additional leverage- I'd use a much larger servo with either a pull/pull cable system or gear head to move it up/down. THe trick is to get it to move smooth and fast. Rotating it wouldn't be hard- I'd have it spin and light up when you pressed the trigger (or bent your index finger.)

 

[old school dude]

I'll have to figure out how to do that.

4 shared i think is a file hosting site and cant be too hard to figure out. i would love to download the guide, i just dont wanna be a member of that site to get it. Thanks

 

[Honus]

4 shared i think is a file hosting site and cant be too hard to figure out. i would love to download the guide, i just dont wanna be a member of that site to get it. Thanks

Edited first post to include PDF- does that work? Check it out and let me know what you think. As with all my tutorials, feel free to distribute as you like -just make sure to credit the source. All I ask is that people don't go selling my work on eBay or claim it as their own. Had that happen in the past and it's a real no no...

 

[Charlieiscool12]

HEY! im in the process of following you arc reactor tutorial on instructibles. im still in the process of getting the sheet metal i need though. you arc reactors look great!

 

[iron mang]

sign me up for the kit!

 

[Deadalus Thorn]

Nice work man!

I have been using your instructable thread for a while on my own build, and its been great, very valuable resource

Thank you, and cheers for uploading the PDF version too.

 

[tompkins420]

best reactor build ive seen so far great .work man

 

[ronlan1984]

man that stuff is awesome mabe you can put a tut together for the motorized face mask on the Iron man Helmet.

 

[Honus]

Motorizing stuff isn't too hard- it's all about packaging and making it durable and simple to use. I sketched out the design for a animatronic War Machine cannon during lunch- I think it took me all of five minutes! I figured out how to make the barrels spin using a hidden motor and the barrels would have orange LEDs in them, which would light up one at a time as they rotate. So press the trigger, the barrels rotate and light up and you get the firing sound. The cannon would track head movements as well.



Regarding the Predator cannon (and a War Machine adaptation), the last time I studied any electronics was over 20 years ago, so I had to learn all about microcontrollers and writing code/physical computing.



When I first started looking at this I had just envisioned a simple system that was controlled using bend sensors on your fingers and it wouldn't be able to look up and down. That really was a bit cumbersome to operate and wasn't very natural.



Next I looked at keeping the bend sensor that would raise the cannon, but I figured out a system that had a cable mounted under the mask that turned a pulley/spring loaded potentiometer (mounted under the cannon mechanism) that would allow the cannon to follow your head rotation. It still wasn't able to look up/down. Now I got a natural (and smooth) rotation but fixing/routing the cable was difficult and cumbersome. Mask removal could also be a real problem.



Then I started looking at different kinds of sensors. Gyroscopic, compass and accelerometers. Combo boards, IMU's (inertial measurement unit), etc. I have a friend that is a data acquisition engineer that works for Learjet so I picked his brain as well as a friend that is a programmer and the brains of the engineers at Sparkfun. Compasses are affected by tilt, so you have to compensate for that and then they don't work when you rotate your whole body vs. just your head, so dual compasses would be necessary and you'd have to write code to differentiate between the two. A gyroscope could work, but it still has to be integrated with an accelerometer to a get an accurate angle of rotation. Most of the solutions I found were pretty complex in terms of programming requiring sophisticated algorithms and/or extremely expensive on the hardware side. There are also pretty severe space restrictions for fitting sensors inside the Predator Bio helmet as some of the IMU's available are pretty large physically. But I would get the look up/down function.......



Then I found that I could modify the sensor board out of a Wii Nunchuck controller and interface it with a microcontroller over its I2C bus. This provided me with an inexpensive and reliable multi axis accelerometer and two finger pushbuttons with an easy to use interface. I ended up writing code that would allow me to access all of the Nunchuck's functions- three accelerometer outputs, the joystick and the two pushbuttons. When it was all said and done the rotation was still a bit of a problem as the accelerometer only really gives you a stable output with respect to gravity so you have to tilt it to get the rotation. What I found was that if I mounted it in the forehead area of the Predator helmet it really didn't need much tilt at all to get a stable rotation. The beauty of this system is that there are only only two finger buttons to control everything- it's also pretty easy for me to modify the code.



Now the problem is that I need the sensor to be as level as possible in the fore/aft direction for the look up/down function to work properly (this is what you see in the video) so the rotation is off and requires more tilt motion than I would normally like. Hence, I'll probably end up using a dual sensor system. I was able to successfully integrate a programmable sound board for all the Predator sounds as well as add functions for both an animatronic helmet and gauntlet blades.



My goal in this project was to create the most realistic appearing system that was easy to use for the least amount of money. Since this is also an open source project it had to be able to be built by people that weren't electronics engineers. My plan all along has been to have a complete tutorial online on how to build this.



In the end, there may be better sensor systems that come along, but given the nature of the interface to the system and how easy it is to upload code to the controllers I should be able to add improvements over time without re engineering the entire system. I'm sure a real electronics designer would be able to come up with a better/more accurate system if they put their mind to it so I definitely welcome any input.

 

[jake11124]

wow that was almost over my head and im amazed that i kept up with almost all of that and im 14. i got the gist of it and i say that that would do a good job but then again im not an engineer.