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

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

Updating for files I made/altered: Predator Armor - P1 Style - Hunter - from 1987 Movie Cut up for 8x10x8 Printer Bed. by moesizzlac

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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 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.
Hi this is superb, you do amazing work. I would love to do this for my Pred suit. I see all the pics n details and is very helpful. First time doing something of this caliber but ready for the challenge. Do I need schematics and how do I know what wires to purchase?
 
Hi this is superb, you do amazing work. I would love to do this for my Pred suit. I see all the pics n details and is very helpful. First time doing something of this caliber but ready for the challenge. Do I need schematics and how do I know what wires to purchase?
Most of my stuff was purchased from adafruit. I think I helped link all the parts and where to purchase them on this thread as I copied Moe's setup.

Also, use screw terminal adapters to lower wire space requirements. You will need ones with 0.1mm spacing on them...
 
Hi this is superb, you do amazing work. I would love to do this for my Pred suit. I see all the pics n details and is very helpful. First time doing something of this caliber but ready for the challenge. Do I need schematics and how do I know what wires to purchase?
This is what I use for all my wiring https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LH1FR6M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1.

For Schematics, this is what I used for my canon:
Moe - Predator Shoulder Canon Schematic.jpg


And this is what I used for sound:

2220-00.jpg
 
No sir, I meant the piece that holds the plasma cannon. The piece that makes the cannon move all directions.
The cannon itself holds or houses on servo. I used a hitec mg-645 I think. That would handle the Pan or left to right action. The second servo would handle the tilt or up and down action.
 
moe, Could you post a picture of how you mounted the second servo at the base? I think that is the only real outstanding question that is not sufficiently covered with documentation or pictures.
 
Is this the part?
The part looks like the right one. It is just a high torque standard size servo. The hs-645-mg has the best performance and cost factors out there.

I get all my stuff from servo city:
 
This is what I use for all my wiring https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LH1FR6M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1.

For Schematics, this is what I used for my canon:
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And this is what I used for sound:

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Hello Moe i cant seem to get the gun to work. i copied that schematic you have for the servos. all this is new to me. I copied the code to the arduino from that instructibles tutorial. and nothing happens when i move the gyro? any ideas? everything seems to be getting power. the LEDS are all green. thx!
 
Hello Moe i cant seem to get the gun to work. i copied that schematic you have for the servos. all this is new to me. I copied the code to the arduino from that instructibles tutorial. and nothing happens when i move the gyro? any ideas? everything seems to be getting power. the LEDS are all green. thx!
Follow this blog post from adafruit and see what your mileage is:
 
The part looks like the right one. It is just a high torque standard size servo. The hs-645-mg has the best performance and cost factors out there.

I get all my stuff from servo city:
Hey where do you put that second servo? I know one goes into the gun itself there's some pictures but what about the second one? Thank you very much!
 
Follow this blog post from adafruit and see what your mileage is:
Excellent I got it to work! I just tried different pins for the pwm I'm not quite sure where they were labeled in the code but they actually work out! Thank you all!
 
Oh, that's easy, just take a look here (Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board - WAV/OGG Trigger with 16MB Flash) to get an idea on how to wire the sound board. The buttons are your choice to which sounds you want them to make.

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They Discuss the Sound FX board in detail around the 13 minute mark Here:
.

The rest of the wiring into the gauntlet is power in, Ground, 2 wires for flashlight toggle and 2 wires to turn on the cannon and laser lights.
So how did you actually wire in power in ground the two wires for the flashlight toggle and the two wires to turn on the cannon laser lights? Do you have some sort of schematic again I need all this. I did get the head tracker to work though! Additionally how did you actually put in the flashlight and connect it inside the gun? Do you have a picture of that exact setup? Thank you again!
 
So how did you actually wire in power in ground the two wires for the flashlight toggle and the two wires to turn on the cannon laser lights? Do you have some sort of schematic again I need all this. I did get the head tracker to work though! Additionally how did you actually put in the flashlight and connect it inside the gun? Do you have a picture of that exact setup? Thank you again!
Ground is common on everything. The mpu6050 is one of many gyroscopes out there now, so that is not the only option. Plus there are the qwiic/qt connections on some of the newer boards as a standard connector now.

The light is basically wired in and inside the housing the wires are routed through a void to come out where a hole could be made or exists. Just be careful to not reverse polarity on connections as that is likely to burn up leds and lights.

For the leds/lights. Positive hooks to the pwm channel. negative hooks to common ground. I initially used 36" wires jumper wires. THen I switched over to jst-rcy 2 wire connectors.

For switches I used jst-xh and later made jst-ph to jst-rcy connector adapters.

The magic in wiring is figuring out in how to route it so it does not get bound and how to route it so it is not easily seen. Trial and error is your friend.

This was a wip video I did showing off my progress on my 800 some line python script using a wiimote for control:

 
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That looks awesome but I'm really new to this and I don't really see how the flashlight is actually wired in? I see it looks like you took out the bulb and just stuck it in there and what looks like on moe's picture a double a battery in some sort of a holder. But how is the back of it actually activated? And connected to I suppose you Arduino or your wrist computer? Thank you again!
 
That looks awesome but I'm really new to this and I don't really see how the flashlight is actually wired in? I see it looks like you took out the bulb and just stuck it in there and what looks like on moe's picture a double a battery in some sort of a holder. But how is the back of it actually activated? And connected to I suppose you Arduino or your wrist computer? Thank you again!
Well I have been putting off re-assembling things and doing another video ahead of doing a metal wrap around on the setup.
 

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