Project: Spartan VI Suit (From Halo)

[Gordo4444]

So my friend and I got this crazy idea the other day that we were going to make an awesome exoskeleton suit from the game Halo. Originally I was going to build it out of plastic and just make it look cool and then I though. Why half-ass it and waste time and money when I could build an even cooler one!

I've decided to post this on here in case anyone is interested in it and if anyone wanted to add their two sense on the project it would greatly be appreciated.

NOTE: Please keep in mind that we are two teenage nerds who don't have jobs at the moment...

The Goal: The goal of this project is to build an exoskeleton suit like that of "Master Chief" from the video game series Halo that would have functioning "Gizmos and Gadgets".

What's going to be in it: This is  a rough list of what we want to be in the suit (Not all our actually in the game, might i add)

• A HUD in the helmet that would display a couple things, which I will go over later.
• A small touch screen on the wrist that can be used to control the HUD and other things.
• The suit will be made of some sort of metal, probably aluminum.
• A communication system in the helmet. (I figure we could just hack a cheap Walk-E Talk-E to do this)
• Lights on the front of the helmet.
• A camera on the back of the suit that will be linked to the HUD. (We would need this because of the limited perifs the helmet causes)

The HUD: So my idea for the HUD is maybe 2 LCD screens inside the helmet that can be cycled through using the wrist screen. What we want to put in the HUD is....

• Heart rate measurement. (Completely useless but damn cool)
• Temperature gauge (Again useless but you never know when you need the temperature...)
• Time
• The "Back Cam" so we don't get ambushed...

Possible problems:This is just a list of some problems that are going throw a wrench in our project...

Weight: This suit is going to pretty heavy... Using aluminum is going to make it not as heavy... but it will still put alot of stress on our legs.

My friends solution to this is to extend the boots and put metal rods along the shins so that they are bearing the weight and not our ankles.

Heating/cooling: This thing is going to be hot inside... I figure if we use some small computer fans in it it wont suck as much... I don't know yet... Still working on this...


So this is what we have as of yet. I will be updating this every once an a while. Feel free to leave us feedback and stuff. =D

Peace
~Gordo~

[airman00]

Nice idea!

Whats your budget?

[Razor Concepts]

Make it out of fiberglass, a lot cheaper and lighter than aluminum. Lots of tutorials online so just look up Halo suit tutorial. After that it's just a matter of electronics.

[Gordo4444]

Budget... haha, funny word that is....

Yea I've seen some tutorials like that before

[HDL_CinC_Dragon]

Lol gordo I hope youre not planning to build this thing to anything close to those specs on a budget based on how many cans you can find in the street. The camera alone will probably put you at like 30 bucks. thats like 600 cans

For weight assistance you might want to consider some sort of compression springs along the legs attached to the exo frame.

-EDIT-
For lights just get some high brightness LEDs.... I love LEDs...

-EDIT-
For a HUD just get 2 old cell phone screens or something and mount them close enough to your eyes that they fill each eyes vision and just duplicate the images on each one and it will trick your eyes into thinking your looking at one big HUD a few inches or feet in front of your face. Depending on the allowable resolution of each screen of course...

[cooldog]

you could put a Mic in the helmet and use a laptop with speech recognition

just another feature

[RoBoTicS]

Extremely cool idea Defiantly post up pictures when you finish it

[paulstreats]

have you seen this topic yet. (video of exoskeleton suit)

http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=2456.0

[izaktj]

Good luck mate.

[Gordo4444]

Yea, our budget is really too tight for an idea like this.

Reply to cooldog: We're actually putting a mic in for a communication system so we could jump off that too.

Reply to RoBoTicS: Will do! I also want to take pictures during the process!

Reply to HDL_CinC_Dragon: I will keep the spring idea in mind. Also thinking about LED's for the lights as well. A quick question(s) about the cell phone screens. I have 2 of them now. But I couldnt find any tutorial on how to interface LCD screens with microprocessors, could you please point me in the right direction? 

UPDATE: So my friend and I originally decided to keep it between the 2 of us but he (Who goes to another school) decided to tell 2 other people... So it looks like were making 4 suits... So thats double the originally planned cost. (But also double the help)

So yea, we don't have much done yet construction wise. Were still in the "planning" process. My friend is doing some rough sketches (Hes a shitty artist) while im trying to crunch some numbers for prices...

Not sure what else to say for now. Will update every now and then.

Peace!
~Gordo~

[HDL_CinC_Dragon]

hold on a tick. Your not just planning on making one suit, but one for each person? Thats crazy man. I wont say youre overstepping your bounds of ability because I dont know what you guys are capable off or anything but I think you guys should both just focus on the project as if your only going to be building one. Always remember to KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Also, if your friend says keep it between the 2 of you and then goes and tells 2 friends without so much as asking you about it first then he needs to be smacked up side the head. Just tell him I did it and that if he has an issue with that he can come let me know

As far as not having any artistic skill goes, I recommend you guys download Google Sketchup and do some rough designs in there. Its extremely helpful for planning and designing. I couldnt draw a square for the life of me let alone sketch out a robot but with CAD, such as google sketchup, designing is easy and totally awesome!.... ok well im not THAT bad of an artist and I can actually do some basic robot sketches pretty well but you get what im saying

-EDIT-
Oh yeah and for interfacing with the cell phone LCDs, I have no clue either lol. I have 1 already gutted from an old cell phone and 3 other cell phones ready for the chop I suppose I should actively work on actually trying to get those LCDs to work without the phone itself

-EDIT-
wow... totally exceeded the amount of emotes for it to remain in the "below ridiculous" rating...

[Gordo4444]

Yea, i don't plan on having this finished in the near future... at all... We actually decided like 5 minutes ago to make a prototype suit before actually making one of each. That way we get it all down for what we should do.

As for google sketchup, I have used it before and plan on using it on this project but didn't get to it yet...

I will keep looking for a good tutorial for the LCD screens and if I find one I'll let you know!

Oh and emotes... YAY EMOTES! 

[HDL_CinC_Dragon]

Found this on the god like search engine... aka google:
http://serdisplib.sourceforge.net/ser/pcd8544.html

havnt looked all the way through it yet but its looks very promising after a quick skim though