Pip-Boy 2000 "Mk. I" from Fallout 1 / Fallout 2

[firebirdman]

And then, I ran into a problem with the wiring. I had calculated that I had _just_ enough pins in the Pi to connect everything, but that assumed that the Pi had analog input pins. Which it doesn't. The analog inputs are needed to read the potentiometers. I could add ADCs, but even that would increase the pin count. So, plan B: I'm using an Arduino to read the inputs, and send the input events to the Pi via a serial connection. This has the added bonus of less wires running from one half of the case to the other. Now, if some idiot just hadn't installed the Arduino to the space that was already taken up by the power switch... Oh well. I'll see if I can somehow jam them both in there.

 

[Markus]

And then, I ran into a problem with the wiring. I had calculated that I had _just_ enough pins in the Pi to connect everything, but that assumed that the Pi had analog input pins. Which it doesn't. The analog inputs are needed to read the potentiometers. I could add ADCs, but even that would increase the pin count. So, plan B: I'm using an Arduino to read the inputs, and send the input events to the Pi via a serial connection. This has the added bonus of less wires running from one half of the case to the other. Now, if some idiot just hadn't installed the Arduino to the space that was already taken up by the power switch... Oh well. I'll see if I can somehow jam them both in there.

Inputs to Arduino, Arduino serial to RPi, and RPi doing the output to an LCD screen and little audio amp. That's exactly what I'm foing right now with a project (which I will post here in the near future). I am using a RPi 3 B+ (because I still had one) and an Arduino Nano (because it has a MiniUSB plug, from which I can directly connect it to the RPi's USB port).
I love your project! And I'm looking forward to seeing your next steps.

 

[firebirdman]

I actually planned on using a Pi4 originally, but I ran into trouble trying to power the Pi and my display from my power bank. I connected the Pi4 to a USB-C jack, and the display into a USB-B jack. Result: The Pi kept power cycling every couple of seconds. I guess the USB-C was too smart for its own good somehow.

So, I switched to Pi3, and ran two separate USB-B cables from the power bank to the Pi3 and the display; no problems whatsoever.

 

[colinjreed]

I’ve said it before, but I love seeing Fallout 1 and 2 builds. I’ll be following along to see how your build progresses!

 

[firebirdman]

Thanks! The build's been sitting on a shelf as I've been too busy doing more outdoorsy work now that the weather permits it. Here's hoping the weather turns bad so I can get back into this...

 

[Uridium]

I always imagined this was more like a tablet... a big chunkly tablet... sort of like a Speak & Spell toy size.

But loving your build, its great to see some of the early Fallout stuff.

 

[colinjreed]

Thanks! The build's been sitting on a shelf as I've been too busy doing more outdoorsy work now that the weather permits it. Here's hoping the weather turns bad so I can get back into this...

I’m all for outdoorsy activities!

 

[MrVolt]

Need more Pip-Boy 2000! Have you had a chance to work on it lately?

 

[firebirdman]

Right, this project... I'm afraid there's been no progress. I've been working on my cars lately.

Thanks for reminding me, though. I've been thinking every now and then that I need to get back to this one to finish it off. Maybe now I'll manage to actually do something about it!

 

[firebirdman]

So, thanks to gentle prodding from MrVolt, I actually managed to finish this project!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1356310600599666688

The electronics were a hassle to cram inside the prop, and I did have to remove the power switch to make room for the Nano. Software side wasn't too bad, apart from the fact that I can't seem to come up with a solution where the Pi would see the Arduino automatically after boot. Markus do you have a solution for that? You mentioned using a similar setup in a project of your own.

Here's the final blog post, about electronics and software: Fallout Pip-Boy 2000 Mk.I replica – Part 5: Electronics and software - ampli.fi blog
The STL files on Thingiverse, in case someone wants to make their own: Fallout Pip-Boy 2000 Mk.I replica by firebirdman
And the software and instructions on Github: xird/pip-boy-2000-mk-I

 

[MrVolt]

So, thanks to gentle prodding from MrVolt, I actually managed to finish this project!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1356310600599666688

The electronics were a hassle to cram inside the prop, and I did have to remove the power switch to make room for the Nano. Software side wasn't too bad, apart from the fact that I can't seem to come up with a solution where the Pi would see the Arduino automatically after boot. Markus do you have a solution for that? You mentioned using a similar setup in a project of your own.

Here's the final blog post, about electronics and software: Fallout Pip-Boy 2000 Mk.I replica – Part 5: Electronics and software - ampli.fi blog
The STL files on Thingiverse, in case someone wants to make their own: Fallout Pip-Boy 2000 Mk.I replica by firebirdman
And the software and instructions on Github: xird/pip-boy-2000-mk-I

You got to that fast! Really excited to see the end result and hopefully more people will build off your files.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

Gorgeous! Really well done. Hope to try this myself sometime!

 

[zapwizard]

The final project looks great!
I have been thinking about my software, I didn't think of making it a webpage. I will soon have to up on my python which I learned years ago, wrote one program in and promptly forgot.

 

[Markus]

So, thanks to gentle prodding from MrVolt, I actually managed to finish this project!
...
The electronics were a hassle to cram inside the prop, and I did have to remove the power switch to make room for the Nano. Software side wasn't too bad, apart from the fact that I can't seem to come up with a solution where the Pi would see the Arduino automatically after boot. Markus do you have a solution for that? You mentioned using a similar setup in a project of your own.

This looks fantastic! Congratulations!
Yes, I am using an Arduino Nano, connected via USB cable to a RPi 3B+ in my GERTY 3000 replica. And the two see each other immediately, and again after each reboot. They communicate via serial connection, as I describe here (the RPi using PYTHON). That link describes in detail what I'm doing. The RPi's PYTHON code needs to start the serial connection (with: ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0', 9600, timeout=1), where the "ttyUSB0" is system-dependent). I hope this is helpful for you.

 

[septic]

Very cool! FO1 & 2 are my favs [ol skool gamer, here]. I'm putting this on my list of things to get printed.
Now, if only someone would model the FO1 10mm pistol ...