When Instructables user ecsaul23’s kids decided they wanted to be characters from Pac-Man for Halloween, she decided to become the arcade game to match them. She went a step further and decided to make her Pac-Man costume playable. She made the costume from simple materials like cardboard, hot glue, and spray paint. She used a projector and a plug and play Pac-Man game to make the game playable. She got inspiration from a playable Adventure Time BMO costume.
After gathering reference photos, she came up with a sketch that would let her visualize the different components she would need to build. She used different colors to indicate the various parts and began the build by assembling the body compartment. Let’s skip ahead to how she made the projector housing box:
I used a double cereal box from Sams to house my components.
Cut off one of the larger panels.
The game will plug into the projector and the battery pack will plug in as well. We need to flip the image so that when people play it from the other side of the screen, it is the right way for them. This is where the mirror comes in. It plays 2 major rolls: it flips the image and it helps make the image larger in a small space.
Sit your mirror at an angle against the back panel, and your projector and battery pack near the open end. I used the cut off panel to hold above the box at the angle I wanted to screen to be so that I could move the mirror to the angle that best fit that. Mark around the mirror with a pencil to be able to line it up later.
This little experimenting will probably end up different in the end, but for me the angle of the mirror was about the same in the end, either way, this is good practice for understanding how it all works together.
Read more at Instructables.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each weekday this month we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween! Expect wearables, hacks & mods, costumes and more here on the Adafruit blog! Working on a project for Halloween this year? Share it with us on Google+, in the comments below, the Adafruit forums, Facebook, or Twitter— we’d love to see what you’re up to and share it with the world (tag your posts #ElectronicHalloween). Tune in to our live shows, Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern, 3D hangouts with Matt, Pedro, and Noe, and Ask an Engineer, featuring store discount codes, ideas for projects, costumes, and decorations, and more!