Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Build a Portal Turret (Without Expensive Equipment) – Emiko Soroka”.
Hi everyone, my name, is emmy kosovoka, but most people call me emmy because it’s easier to pronounce i’m 17 and concurrently enrolled in santa monica college. So i don’t have a lot of time, but in what free time i do have i love to build things. I come from a family of makers. My dad is a software engineer and my mom was an apparel designer, so i started building things early and never stopped.
I first came to the maker faire in 2012 and, as i looked around, i thought it’s so cool to be here, but wouldn’t it be even cooler to be a part of it? I’Ve wanted to do something like this ever since so being here. Presenting this project is really a dream, come true for me and a great privilege, i’m just so excited to be here and to see all of you here as well hello. So that’s me – and this is my project – a life-size turret from the video games portal and portal 2.
for the non-gamers out there. A turret is a robot that shoots you to death. Luckily, mine doesn’t do that. It shoots nerf, darts and not very far either.
I first started this project two years ago and started working in a sporadic sort of way on a few little parts. I built the eye and i built the legs and a prototype shooting mechanism i made out of legos and some code that lit up leds. Instead of driving motors because i didn’t have any motors, yet it’s really only come together in the last month since i applied to present. So what you’re seeing now is a great example of the power of a deadline to get things done. So when i started this project i had no idea it would be so difficult, fascinating time, consuming amazing, frustrating and empowering sometimes all on the same day. Difficult.
Because when i started, i had zero knowledge of how to go about actually making my idea a reality. Fascinating because i had to learn so much to get it working time consuming because there was so much to do and a lot of it. I didn’t know how to do amazing in the sense that i’m amazed it all works. The day before yesterday i was still debugging the software and assembling the circuitry, and then yesterday i had the most terrible disaster, but luckily it got fixed, it was frustrating when it didn’t work like yesterday and empowering because two years ago i would never have believed myself Capable of making something like this, because i’m really not the kind of person you’d expect to build a turret, my dad being a software engineer and a musician is a maker of a different sort.
He doesn’t do hardware because, when he does his repairs often make things worse. He has a soldering iron and a multimeter which he uses for things like assembling guitar, pedals and repairing broken audio cables. My mother was a professional dress designer before she was a mother. So fancy lacy things are her specialty.
She still sews. She made me the skirt out of my brother’s old jeans, but neither of my parents are electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, prop makers, woodworkers or any other type of maker who could help with a turret? We don’t have many tools since my dad’s, not that handy, i used the basics, a saw, a hand drill. My mother bought it because it was cute screwdrivers files, an x-acto knife and wood glue and lots of duct tape.
The panels are paper mache and the structural parts of the legs are pvc. This is styrofoam on top of it, and this is more paper mache. There are pvc and cardboard tubes in the turret’s body and some basswood from the art store, because we don’t really have scrap wood around our house.
I used a soldering iron to assemble chips and and lengthen wires, but that’s about it and i have the multimeter. Of course to measure resistance and voltage, which is really important for tracking down problems. As for a workshop, the turret just kind of took over our whole house, there was paper mache and legos in the family room assembly in the garage soldering in my dad’s office circuit building in my room and the kitchen, i’m really lucky. I have very supportive parents, though they couldn’t help me build a circuit. They were willing to drive to all electronics an hour away twice in the same week, so i could just so i could complete the project.
My mom didn’t know what i was doing, but she would bring me lunch, so i didn’t have to stop sit on the floor and help paper mache all the turret panels and drive me wherever i needed to go. My dad was another driver, advice, provider, software debugger and, most importantly, financer. He paid for those trips to franklin’s hardware and all electronics, the parts i ordered online. The time we had to go to radio track asap because i had run out of solder, though they didn’t understand all of what i did. My parents helped in other equally important ways, but i also found help from other sources. My friend’s dad a mechanical engineer designed the telescoping mechanism that allows the arms to slide in and out my physics teacher, a genius engineer who works at spacex advised me about motor drivers and i actually got an in-person consultation from an electrical engineer. Ehab el nega, who comes to our neighborhood every weekend to visit his parents and was happy to stop by and help me figure out what motors to get where electronics, which is my new favorite store, and what batteries to power them. We also emailed extensively about motor drivers, batteries and avoiding blowing things up, especially these 12 volt batteries, which i’ve never used before and just this morning i got extra help from nicole margolis himself, the author of my favorite arduino books, who provided essential last minute help when The electronics suddenly stopped working, but despite all this help, i still made a lot of mistakes. My first idea for the turret panels was to use expanding foam mostly because i didn’t know anything about it.
You can see how well that worked out. I mean look at this one. I had a huge soldering disaster. The other day too.
I was trying to transfer my circuits from a breadboard, but i got too much solder on the circuit board and i made it worse trying to remove it and stayed up till past two in the morning de-soldering it. So i could reassemble it all on the breadboard, where it’s going to stay until i learn how to solder better. I can stick two wires together. That’S about it! One of my prototype.
Shooting mechanisms use the pvc pipe for the barrel and a piece of dowelbot as the hammer. You know the thing that flies in and pushes the dart out. I was very proud of it because there was a slot for the dart to fall in through, and i was told that i need some specialized tool. I don’t remember exactly what maybe a drill dress. All i know is, it was big and expensive and i didn’t have access to one. I was told i’d need that tool to make the slot, but i managed to make it with a half inch drill bit and a rat tail file, except when i started testing the mechanism i discovered it was unsafe. The rubber bands that pulled the dowel back to push the dart out pulled back with enough force that the screw i was using to catch it got loose and popped out. It was a good thing.
I was wearing safety goggles. The legs encountered multiple problems too, particularly this back one, which is still a little crooked. I don’t care, i’m happy if it just stands up.
The core of the legs is pvc, which i boiled in the kitchen and bent on the floor. On top of a moving blanket next to the stove, the white parts are styrofoam and covered in foam coat, but there’s a paper mache patch on this leg. Let’S see if we can see it when paper mache patched, because the legs fell over before the body was attached and then and that styrofoam part broke, so lots of mistakes.
Here’S a stupid one. I made this holder for the shooting mechanism, it blocked the moving parts and i had to redesign it as you can see. The shooting mechanism is also pretty much made entirely out of lego, which is kind of silly, but it works, and these are only the big mistakes oops. Well, i made a mistake. There too, i used to keep counter mistakes, but there were too many and i lost track trying to hot glue. These pvcs together was really dumb.
I had to redo it with epoxy, as was setting this front panel down, so it flattened as it dried. I messed up a chip trying to solder it once i stuck a diode in backwards and i short-circuited a battery pack on my desk. Luckily it was only a double-a battery pack, i put it down and the wires miraculously touched. Luckily, i smelled it before it caught fire.
Your nose by the way is a great tool for electrical engineering. If something smells like it’s going wrong, it probably is so that’s the project. Now, let’s see if it works, i have to plug in the battery. Let’S see, i didn’t leave the battery in the turret, because it’s really heavy and i’m kind of worried about the weight is the eye on i’m plugging it in so.
First it should detect you people with the motion sensors. I have to pull the panels out manually because i’m having a problem with them. Oh my gosh, this fell off. I have to pull out the panels. Oh it’s detecting. Did you see that it worked? It worked? I can’t believe it. I really can’t i mean it. Wasn’T working before not sure what’s wrong with this shooting mechanism? Oh there’s one stuck in it. I don’t know so this is only to it version. 1.0. The next version – i’m hopefully, will be a lot better. This one’s supposed to talk, but i’m not sure, what’s going on with the sound, did you hear anything well, i know it’s outputting a sound signal because if it hasn’t the whole program would have hung, but oh well, imagine it here i’ll. Do it hello target acquired? So, as you can see, it also didn’t shoot very far, but that’s actually a good thing, because i don’t want to run around and have darts flying into the audience plus i promise not to lose any they’re.
My brothers, i was also planning to add a laser sight, but then i realized it could be a problem because the laser might get in one of your eyes. So i didn’t that’s another unintended feature. I’Ve got a lot of those, you know about undocumented features and software.
Those are the bugs. The software engineers think aren’t so bad, so they just say they’re features. Well, i have unintended features things i didn’t intend to happen, but i later decided are okay, the panels. Don’T fit quite right and i have to pull them out manually because having a problem with one of the motor drivers, but you know it’s: okay, they don’t fit because they’re handmade the antennae are held on with duct tape.
It makes them really easy to remove. So what i really hope you get from this presentation is that you too can make things and it’s okay, if they’re not perfect, because as long as you’re having fun and nothing’s blowing up or catching fire, that’s not supposed to then you’re doing a good job. If you have a crazy idea like let’s build a turret, then go for it. It’S okay! If you don’t have a degree in engineering or you don’t know what die from a resistor.
I know there’s a big difference in function, but all i can say for sure is a diode will break if you put it in backwards and a resistor won’t. If you don’t have a workshop or fancy tools, it’s okay be creative and think of how you can make something. Not why you can’t. If someone says you need a drill, press and a laser cutter see if you can use a hand, drill and an x-acto knife, maybe it won’t be perfect, but it’ll be yours and it’ll be great if you’re still a teenager or even younger, that doesn’t mean you’re Too young to make things you might need more help.
You need supportive friends and family. Those are great, but there are always people willing to help an enthusiastic maker. If you don’t know any engineers personally then start going to maker meetings and hacker spaces and meet some. If you don’t, if there aren’t any hacker spaces in your area, go online to maker forums and don’t be afraid to ask for help. That’S the big one. The fact that you’re asking and you want to learn will supersede the fact that you don’t know something that might that people might consider basic. It’S okay, if you don’t know what you’re doing most people don’t when i started the coding, the turret. I had no idea what i was doing.
I looked at my book, the arduino cookbook by michael margolis and thought there’s a semicolon here in the book. So i’ll put one in here, there’s brackets here so i’ll add a couple and with my dad’s help for the more persistent bugs and lots of example code. I built a working program. I was astonished when i looked at it last week and realized how well it actually worked.
There was a comment at the top where an array is created to hold the names of the sound files. That said what the heck is this creating a set? I didn’t know why you put parameters in parentheses or what a parameter was for that matter. Maybe you don’t either, but it’s okay, because you can learn what i’m really trying to say is that everyone can be a maker. It’S okay! If you don’t know what you’re doing, because you can get help it’s okay, if you don’t have a proper workshop or fancy equipment or hackerspace down the street, it’s okay! If you don’t have a college degree, you have the internet and somewhere out.
There is an expert happy to share his knowledge with you. So don’t say i can’t say i’ll: try, because chances are you’ll, succeed. .