Personal Projects

Underwater Photobooth

This is a photobooth that is designed to be used underwater. It was made using a raspberry pi, raspberry pi accessories, and an enclosure made from solvent welded acrylic. The enclosure is sealed with a gasket that’s compressed by a flange. The button sends a signal to the pi through the acrylic without a wire passing through in order to eliminate that leak path. This is done using a magnet and a hall effect sensor. The magnet is attached to the reverse side of the button, which was 3D printed out of PLA. The support for the electronics was also printed. The python script was taken from this Hackster article and modified to add the image processing to create the collage.

Smart Mirror

Using a raspberry pi, an old LCD display, and some translucent mirrored acrylic, my brother and I made a smart mirror that displays the weather and time. The software for this was downloaded from this github repository.

Laser Engraved Ornament

I made a Christmas ornament as a gift for my roommates by laser cutting a photo of us onto slices of the previous year’s tree. I documented the process and created an instructable on how to build this. The instructable can be found here.

Costumes

Being the huge nerds that we are, my friends and I go to costume parties and conventions whenever possible. Here are some costume related projects.

Zombie

For Halloween last year I went as a zombie. The costume consisted entirely of make-up. While the facepaint and blood were pretty standard, I used black powermesh to create the effect of one eye being missing, and latex was used to create deep wrinkles and peeling skin.

Mermaid

I created a mermaid tail for a friend using cast silicone and a polycarbonate fin. To cast the silicone I created a fiberglass mold. The plug for the scales was made from laser cut EVA foam, and the plug for the fin was made from monster makers clay.

Iron Man

Some friends were going to a con as the Avengers. My brother in law went as Tony Stark. There wasn’t time to make a full armor suit, but we made a chestplate for the suit and used articles of clothing and licensed merchandise for the rest of the suit. This was my first attempt at making costume armor using EVA foam.

Heimdall

This was for a party themed with gods of antiquity. The costume consisted of various thrift store items, a cape made from fabric bought at Jo-Ann Fabrics, and a simple custom tunic. Rather than stitched, the tunic is assembled with fabric glue since its fast and simple, and the tunic didn’t need to be used over and over again. Heimdall’s famous horn, Gjallarhorn, was made with a ram’s horn bought on Amazon with an extended mouthpiece made from a bent aluminum tube.