Praywing
New Member
Hei! If you want to jump into something sensible and skip my rambling about good old days, jump to paragraph 4.
I am Praywing. Man of thousand projects and Pip-Boy is just one of them. Years ago I played Fallout: New Vegas and fell in love with many gadgets we see in the game.
Plasma Pistol, Laser Rifle, Holotapes... and of course, Pip-Boy. I love to challenge myself and because of this, I started making plans for the Pip-Boy as early as 2011.
However, I couldn't really find anything to... work with. 2012 I heard about Raspberry Pi. New tiny computer, not larger than a credit card. 2013 Janyary, I went to army. Most of the male population in Finland have to serve in army. Or in defence forces, as we like to call it. In army, I met man who was later assigned as our companys (military company, 2. pioneeri komppania) scribe. And his hobby was coding. He told me about python code language. I had actually coded with python in highschool 2012, but just some kind of "avoid objects with your mouse or lose your life" kind of game. Perfect, I could work with this. When I had my 1. holiday (after 2 long months
) i bought my first Raspberry Pi. Model 1. After a while, I found website called Odroid. They make open android boards. And they had their own version of Raspberry pi. There was everythin Pi has and even more! Bluetooth, Gps, Wifi!! And the best thing was, it was only 4cmx8cm (Or something like that...)I bought odroid 2013.
My dreams started to take concrete step when i managed to plug tv into Pi. Now I only needed a code. I managed to find very crude python code that used pygame as
visual library. A few words about python. We can think Python as the Main Library. Library called Python, in the city called, Python. In this City, there are multiple libraries. In Main Library we have a lot of different stuff. We can simulate Operating System like stuff, like creating a file or showing a list of files. Python is however written in console and it can operate through console. You can write commands and it works perfectly fine without any graphical user interface, OR GUI. Pip-Boy needs GUI. Thats the only reason it is as cool as it is. So we need library that knows how to draw.
Pygame is a library that can be used to draw visuals on the screen.
I tried first to rewrite the code i found from the internet, I just didn't know how. My coding experience was very limited. I did managed to change color of text and draw some simple shapes. I bought a lot of different components from here and there: Switches, buttons, cheap screens... stuff like that. When Zapwizard announced his Pip-Boy project I had a new sparkle inside of me. Someone else, far far more capable than me, is doing this. GREAT! maybe I can learn stuff?? I heard about dragonboard and bought one. However, my code was lacking. It just wasnt working. And I am man of 1000 projects so I was not building Pip-Boy as seriosly as I wanted.... I own 3d printers (Yes, a couple) so I could 3d print different models i had stumbled in internet. Dragonator had made one, and for a long time it was the model i inspected. Then ZapWizard released his whole project. Everything. Code, models, CADs, everything.
Well finally, this year , First of February 2023 I started to really think how to make this work.
ZapWizard has made an AWESOME JOB. Hands down. Nothing I build will never match his work. I knew I can make the model work. I just want to wear working Pip-Boy ONCE in RopeCon and I can stop this. So I started to code. First I read a TON of tutorials. Learned how to draw using pygame. How to make shapes. I read ZapWizards code. And then it hit me.
I will code this myself. I will make a program that even people who don't know how to code can use. Program you can use with pc, or with pipboy. Where you can add files to your inventory, to remove them. Add pictures, listen music and stuff. But with as little code as possible. I figured that as an inventory I can just list stuff from folder. If we think Pip-Boy as a computer. You open folder called INV. Inside of that is more folders: Weapons, Apparel, Aid... Inside of those are individual files that make up items. Easy enough? So our program lists all the files, and shows information from each individual file.
I borrowed image files from ZapWizard, mostly just to see if my code works. Now that it does indeed work, I can make items easily.
I have a few errors in my code so description of certain items show wrong.
For Data, my idea is to make section for file creation. So it lists all files that Pip-Boy's individual pages show. And if we want to create new file, we press create. It opens a editor to write stuff. Then we just fill out missing info. If we are in weapons section, program creates weapon file with all info weapons need and we just fill in numbers. It even shows question mark going around if we don't have a images assigned to item. Pretty neat? Still work in progress.
Map is also work in progress, but it will show edited google map.
Finally we have Radio.
I WILL HEAVILY EDIT THIS POST IN THE FUTURE!
I am Praywing. Man of thousand projects and Pip-Boy is just one of them. Years ago I played Fallout: New Vegas and fell in love with many gadgets we see in the game.
Plasma Pistol, Laser Rifle, Holotapes... and of course, Pip-Boy. I love to challenge myself and because of this, I started making plans for the Pip-Boy as early as 2011.
However, I couldn't really find anything to... work with. 2012 I heard about Raspberry Pi. New tiny computer, not larger than a credit card. 2013 Janyary, I went to army. Most of the male population in Finland have to serve in army. Or in defence forces, as we like to call it. In army, I met man who was later assigned as our companys (military company, 2. pioneeri komppania) scribe. And his hobby was coding. He told me about python code language. I had actually coded with python in highschool 2012, but just some kind of "avoid objects with your mouse or lose your life" kind of game. Perfect, I could work with this. When I had my 1. holiday (after 2 long months
) i bought my first Raspberry Pi. Model 1. After a while, I found website called Odroid. They make open android boards. And they had their own version of Raspberry pi. There was everythin Pi has and even more! Bluetooth, Gps, Wifi!! And the best thing was, it was only 4cmx8cm (Or something like that...)I bought odroid 2013.My dreams started to take concrete step when i managed to plug tv into Pi. Now I only needed a code. I managed to find very crude python code that used pygame as
visual library. A few words about python. We can think Python as the Main Library. Library called Python, in the city called, Python. In this City, there are multiple libraries. In Main Library we have a lot of different stuff. We can simulate Operating System like stuff, like creating a file or showing a list of files. Python is however written in console and it can operate through console. You can write commands and it works perfectly fine without any graphical user interface, OR GUI. Pip-Boy needs GUI. Thats the only reason it is as cool as it is. So we need library that knows how to draw.
Pygame is a library that can be used to draw visuals on the screen.
I tried first to rewrite the code i found from the internet, I just didn't know how. My coding experience was very limited. I did managed to change color of text and draw some simple shapes. I bought a lot of different components from here and there: Switches, buttons, cheap screens... stuff like that. When Zapwizard announced his Pip-Boy project I had a new sparkle inside of me. Someone else, far far more capable than me, is doing this. GREAT!
maybe I can learn stuff?? I heard about dragonboard and bought one. However, my code was lacking. It just wasnt working. And I am man of 1000 projects so I was not building Pip-Boy as seriosly as I wanted.... I own 3d printers (Yes, a couple) so I could 3d print different models i had stumbled in internet. Dragonator had made one, and for a long time it was the model i inspected. Then ZapWizard released his whole project. Everything. Code, models, CADs, everything. Well finally, this year , First of February 2023 I started to really think how to make this work.
ZapWizard has made an AWESOME JOB. Hands down. Nothing I build will never match his work. I knew I can make the model work. I just want to wear working Pip-Boy ONCE in RopeCon and I can stop this. So I started to code. First I read a TON of tutorials. Learned how to draw using pygame. How to make shapes. I read ZapWizards code. And then it hit me.
I will code this myself. I will make a program that even people who don't know how to code can use. Program you can use with pc, or with pipboy. Where you can add files to your inventory, to remove them. Add pictures, listen music and stuff. But with as little code as possible. I figured that as an inventory I can just list stuff from folder. If we think Pip-Boy as a computer. You open folder called INV. Inside of that is more folders: Weapons, Apparel, Aid... Inside of those are individual files that make up items. Easy enough? So our program lists all the files, and shows information from each individual file.
I borrowed image files from ZapWizard, mostly just to see if my code works. Now that it does indeed work, I can make items easily.
I have a few errors in my code so description of certain items show wrong.
For Data, my idea is to make section for file creation. So it lists all files that Pip-Boy's individual pages show. And if we want to create new file, we press create. It opens a editor to write stuff. Then we just fill out missing info. If we are in weapons section, program creates weapon file with all info weapons need and we just fill in numbers. It even shows question mark going around if we don't have a images assigned to item. Pretty neat? Still work in progress.
Map is also work in progress, but it will show edited google map.
Finally we have Radio.
I WILL HEAVILY EDIT THIS POST IN THE FUTURE!
