Star Wars Hologram Projector | Prop Build

today in the smugglers room we need a better working and more sophisticated holocom device because this one just isn't going to work that's coming up [Music] what's up you awesome geeks i'm brian and welcome to the smugglers room this week this chubby geek is taking on a one-day build that is in no way shape or form a one-day build yeah it happens all the time but what i wanted to do was build a interesting holocomm unit and i was inspired by the end of season one of the mandalorian when you see moff gideon pop out of this particular device i love that it was built into a case and i liked all the different details that it had so since we now have inspiration let's get into the build [Music] my local harbor freight had this box on sale over memorial day weekend the orange is exactly what caught my eye it seemed to have a little bit of that rebel look to it and i figured this box would be perfect for my holocomm design [Applause] i also have several of these lenses which would be perfect for the hologram point of focus i've harvested this lens and others from old crt televisions and projectors this specific one was given to us by our good friends the bryans who i want to send a special thank you especially to connor and maddie for making sure we have the most excellent griblis for this project what i did was i measured out the box and then i worked up a complete graphic layout of the entire project i used some reference from other star wars panels and of course the prop from the mandalorian i was able to laser cut both the frame and the inserts for the project i like the way the frame combined with the various inserts will give the panel depth one thing about laser cutting panels that i'm really enjoying is that i can use the laser cutter as a way to create a mask for painting the pinstriping in the past i've used automotive pinstripe tape which totally works but being able to paint them on is a much cleaner and quicker way for me to work [Music] our smugglers guild community on patreon is one of those aspects that really fuel this channel the community members inspire us motivate us and truly give us the ability to invest in project materials tools and so much more to keep this going we want to thank each of you who make the smugglers room [Music] possible [Music] of course you need greeblies but the one thing i've found is to show restraint on panels like this you can quickly overdo it and then you lose the look you're going for pick out some unusual pieces like hard drive motors or other silver parts and then group them into odd numbers like numbers of three or five and look at a lot of reference before you glue it all up it'll give you ideas on color size quantities and how to position them on a panel [Music] now i wanted the lens to sit recessed in the box so i drew up a box design based on graphics provided by edo from our star wars room builders group on facebook this box would then sit inside the comm unit though the graphics are hard to see against the black material it does catch the light and gives the box a more interesting look it's all about the layers and the details within those layers [Music] the iconic white and blue tiles are a must for almost any star wars project like this and for those of you that have been patiently waiting for more of these to appear in our store the wait is almost over in one week on june 16th we will once again have stock of these a limited supply of droid socket kits and some really cool new products that we've been working on that you'll want to check out so make sure to go to the smuggler's room website thesmugglesroom.com that way you can sign up and be notified as soon as the products in our store go live [Music] okay my friends typically when it comes to wiring i'm a lot more specific about how the wire gets laid out and tied together this however is a little more messy than i'm used to that said i kind of want to walk you through what i've done here so you can kind of understand how i've wired this up now overall this looks a bit of a mess i know but bear with me first of all we're using all of these pre-wired leds and all that means is that the led itself already has a resistor in place typical leds you need to put some type of resistor in line so that you don't blow the bulb in this case it's built in which is why they call it pre-wired so what i did is i dropped all these pre-wired leds all around the board here and what i'm looking for is to be able to animate specific leds as the machine functions certain leds the positive ends are grouped together others are ran individual and all of them go back to our little arduino board here now you could use any type of arduino or nano or a trinket or different types of boards to get this to function and essentially what i've done is i've taken all the positives and i've landed those on one of these digital inputs 13 through uh it looks like i would use all the way up to three and then i took the ground and i've basically looped the grounds all together so now everything is on the ground and then individual leds are landed on these digital inputs at that point i can go into the arduino program and i can trigger which of these will flash and how long and how often each one will flash the last step for us is to actually take this power switch and wire it so that we're controlling the power on and off of the actual arduino board and that's all that switch is going to do is either turn everything on or turn it all off and i'll probably have a 12 volt power supply connected to the box for now we may be able to do something to power the arduino here with battery but for now we're gonna do the 12 volt power supply okay so now we're all wired up we've got the arduino ready to go so now i'm just gonna plug her in and see if we can get everything lit up it looks like all of our quick wiring works everything's lit i don't love how dim the blue tiles are the white tiles seem to glow really well probably because these are a little less opaque but it'll work and we'll make it work we do need to wire up some lighting for this center piece here we want a nice glow out of that but for now everything's lit up and it works we'll do some programming to animate the lights in a little bit we're making progress one other little bit of electronics i wanted to use with this is a neopixel ring and essentially this is pretty straightforward the ring has a power 5 volt a ground and then another line that you solder and connect to a pin on the arduino so on the board i've got it connected here with power ground and then i put it on pin one now the neopixel ring itself is capable of doing a whole range of colors and in the arduino program you can set this to different values to give you those different colors for this project i specifically wanted a blue and a white so if we power this up you can see here that i get a white and then a blue and a white and a blue and it rotates you can program this to do any of those colors within the rainbow and then you can control the speed in which this happens i'll put a link to the arduino code that i used and then i'll show you here in a sec how i altered that code slightly to get this to do what i wanted [Music] now this box couldn't look clean and new so i airbrushed some flat black paint around the bottom and much in the nooks and crannies a big note here is that you want to seal the paint job right away the material that this box is made out of keeps the paint from sticking overall the sealer helps lock it in but be aware it'll scratch fairly easily which is actually okay for me because all of that damage helps to continue telling the story of the prop now we have one final aspect to complete the holocomb box i wanted the inside lid to have well i guess you would call it instructions if you're a fan of alien then you're likely to remember the self-destruction system that ripley activates on the nostromo i loved that the lid in that system had instructions so i figured i would play off of that a bit i mentioned that our friend edo from the star wars room builders group that he shared some graphics well let me tell you my friends edo has shared a death star full of graphics in that facebook group he created all kinds of decal kits many of which are recreated from those found at galaxy's edge so i want to give a big thank you to edo for sharing that for this project [Music] now we aren't finished until the weathering's finished we need to add a tad bit more grime and for that i turn to my favorite weathering paints water mixable oil paints and a huge thank you to bill and brit over at punish props for changing my life with these paints trust me you can't go wrong with these especially if you're looking for a gritty filthy look which i do every time [Music] my friends this was a seriously fun project and one that i absolutely did not do in a day i will tell you it was one of those projects i thought about abandoning or at least putting on a shelf for another time not because i didn't like the project but because i felt like after it started to take hold it was taking away from other projects that seemed more worthy of that time the room build the mandalorian costumes or finally finishing the gonk droid at the end of the day though i'm glad we stuck with it because it was enjoyable and it reinvigorated me in the building process after being away from building for far too long and that excitement is going to now carry me through to other projects now before we show you the final project just want to ask you to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and if you've enjoyed this video consider giving us a thumbs up it really does help youtube show this episode to more and more people and we would appreciate that alright let's take a look at how this turned out [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] well my friends we hope you enjoyed this episode and that it stirs your imagination and gets you out there building something out of nothing [Music] you

Channel: The Smugglers Room

Views: 17,705

Rating: 4.9295998 out of 5

Keywords: thesmugglersroom, starwars, Star Wars DIY, Star Wars Hologram Projector, Star Wars Prop Build, Star Wars Props, Star Wars hologram, Star Wars Projects, DIY Star Wars, Star Wars Decor, Star Wars Case

Id: AlXrKGoVaxw

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021