My P1 Themed Predator Costume with Electronics and Sounds. (Pic Heavy)

MoeSizzlac

Active Member
My late 2019 project I decided to take on was a Predator Costume like the one from the 1987 movie Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Well not a 1/6th scale costume but rather a full sized one.

I can't make the costume perfect movie accurate because 1) I am no where near the height of the original actor who played the predator and 2) picture perfect is time and cost consuming. This costume was put together for under 500 I believe.

This build will be my version of a similar styled P1 Predator with as many bells and whistles as I can put together.

Like all things, we start with the planning. I went to the https://www.predatorium.com and into their resources to get a bunch of Pepakura files to start converting for my project. Then I went to Thingiverse to see what they had and grabbed Predator Shoulder Cannon by makerslabcz.

After I had all the files, it was time to get to work and make everything printable. It took about a month in spare time to digitally fix everything up and resize it all to my body.

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The backpack:

This model was good for pepakura but not for a 3d print. I first ended up fixing the files and printing it out. This will be the shell to house most of electronics and power bank.

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I only used half of this model from thingiverse and fitted it with a spot for a flashlight and a servo and an outlet for the wires to go out the lower back.

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Both halves are held together with 8/32 screws and nuts.

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Using this tutorial, I grabbed an Arduino Mega, an MPU6050, battery pack and wired everything up with 2 Cat 5 connections (One that goes to the helmet Where the mpu6050 will sit, and one to the left gauntlet for controls and sound)

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This is a shot from underneath where the power switch is as well as the recharge port.



Left Gauntlet - Creation, sound and control.

Continuing with the planning, let's start with the pepakura file and add a hinge in the print so that it can flip up if I need it to. I also made a slot for my Phone below the flip plate.

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Let's allow holes for momentary switches and latching switches, cat5 connection and audio out on the flip plate:

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Now let's get it printed and loaded up:

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I wired it up with an adafruit soundfx board and started wiring everything together. The sound out went to a 3.5mm headphone jack which will plug into an external speaker.

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It's actually much cleaner inside now.

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Final outside picture of the left gauntlet.
 
Right Gauntlet:

Making retractable claws is not the easiest for me so I decided to go with gravity as the extension and retraction method.

Design:

Start with the pepakura file and make it printable.

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I made some changes to the original pepakura file and incorporated a latch system to allow the redesigned blades to be locked in an extended or retracted mode. You can see the green piece acts as a pivot point in the gauntlet and the blue stick prevents the claws from sliding too far forward.

The plastic claws looked nice printed, but I wanted something a little stronger. I went with aluminum because it is easy to shape and dull so that it is not sharp.

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And the final fit and test with a pull from a string.

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The Head:

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5v lasers set up to go on when the servos turn on.

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Inside of the helmet wired up with the MPU6050 and 3 freaking laser beams. Each laser has a resistor on it to prevent burnout from too much voltage. Even though they state that they are rated for 5 volts, I had 3 burn out already.

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The back of the head was made to house a hard hat but eventually I adjusted it to house only the portion of the hard hat that goes around your head.

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Airbrushed to match the undersuit.

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Beads for the hair.

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Body:

I didn't want to do a latex suit because I know how hot and uncomforatable those can be. Basically, this whole build began with the undersuit. If the undersuit was bad, nothing else was getting done. I got a preprinted suit with most of the details and I have to say, it looks great and breathes nicely. I sewed a zipper into the front for bathroom breaks.

Hands:

I still needed hands so I bought a pair of latex warewolf gloves, Painted them up with acrylic paint and glued the fingers to a pair of brown leather gloves.

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Feet

Basically the same thing done with the hands. Ordered a pair of warewolf feet covers painted and glued them to an old pair of sneakers. I used brown gaffers tape on all seems to act as a leather wrap around the feet. Sorry I don't have pitcures at this time.

Shins:

Nothing different here. Made pepakura files printable and adjusted the knee caps to combine with the shins so that there is less things to attach when getting dressed.

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Thighs:

Same as the Shins:

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The fishnet look:

I took an actual fishing net and cut it up and made a shirt and pants(used nylon string to sew). The fishnet pants along with thigh and cod armor get secured to the undersuit using a belt.

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Neck Seal:

I used a vinyl stair tread and cut it up and used snap fittings to secure it:

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Dry-fitting everything together

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Painting up bone pieces.

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Painting up and giving a weathered look to the armor.

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Testing the equipment:



Video of Sound and Testing




So in conclusion, I went from this:

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To this:

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Final pictures to follow. Probably next Halloween.

I think I'm off to make the Mandalorian suit next.
 
Last edited:
hi can you explane how the wirst blades go together i have 3d printed it but cant seem to work out how it goes together with sting ect thank you in advanced
 
hi can you explane how the wirst blades go together i have 3d printed it but cant seem to work out how it goes together with sting ect thank you in advanced
Sure, take a look at these pictures and let me know if you still have questions.
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The string is attached to my fingers on my right glove so all I have to do is curl my fist in to lift the internal rod and let gravity do the rest.
 
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Hello Moe? Ive been trying to do your arduino head tracking setup. after watching your predator costume you have basically opened the door into me learning basic electronics. I followed the tutorial from instructibles from your link. i cant seem to make it work and i was basically trying to copy your gun and targeting setup. Your setup seems very different than from the one on instructables. i cant find from your pictures any type of "fritz" setup. can you help me? Thank you for your time.
 

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