[BruceWright]

Hi friends,

Been coming up with a way to create an updated, modern look at a belt Gizmo. I’ve been tinkering around with Arduino and I must say, for $27.50 worth of electronics, can’t really beat this little number!

It’s an arduino uno with an LCD shield plugged into it. Then I just used Sugru to stick it to a blank piece of circuit board that I trimmed to exactly fit in my slightly customized tape-measure belt holder.

The whole thing is powered by a 9-volt battery. The 5 buttons plus the reset put it into different modes, system checks of the proton pack, PKE meter readings, anomaly detectors… all fictional of course. Just pre-scripted sequences. Numbers animate up and down. It’s made to look like it’s always either reading out live data or sweeping the area for phenomenon.

[BruceWright]

This post may contain an affiliate link that helps support GBFans.com when you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

Used in this build:

Arduino Microcontoller https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EWOE0UU/re ... UTF8&psc=1

DFROBOT Gravity: 1602 LCD Keypad Shield For Arduino https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006D903KE/re ... UTF8&psc=1

Tape Measure holder https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006GPZ7Q/re ... ZSEGAT7RG8

[BruceWright]

I’ll post the code here tomorrow if anyone wants to make their own. I’ll make the code available and then you can customize it and put your own messages on it.

[Nighty80]

Looks great Bruce!

[BruceWright]

Okay the code for this project has now been posted here:

https://forum.arduino.cc/t/weable-ghost ... zmo/908797

[ArtsNFartsNCrafts]

love it

[egon901]

I just got both parts for this and put the code on, and it's super awesome atm. I have plans to add to the physical dimensions of it to make it a more proper gizmo.

[troberts289]

Thanks for the great idea.

[egon901]

Hey troberts, what are the extra circuit boards you have attached to the Arduino?

[troberts289]

They came out of Dell USBc docking stations . The Dell WD15 dock has a PCB inside that's almost the same height and width as the Sanyo ICC-808D calculator's PCB.

I also screwed on some daughter boards from from the larger WD19 docks, which has some card connector plates, similar to the plates on the bottom of the ICC-808D.

The WD15 is notorious for being junk, and aside from the cable there's no field serviceable parts, so it shouldn't be too hard to find in an e-waste bin somewhere.

I haven't found a PCB of the correct size for the belt's daughter board yet, but when I do I'm thinking I'll use one of the connectors already on the WD15 to join the two. I'd also like to wire up a dell charger so the little power indicator ring glows and plug that into the port on the upper right. I'm just waiting for a broken laptop charger to come across my desk.

[egon901]

Neat. I'm gonna make my own electronics for mine. Gonna have the daughter board be a battery and attach it to a secondary Arduino on the back of the electronics that has a lighting sequence I've already programmed. I'll probably also have a light or two on the daughter board, having the signal go back through the cord possibly.

[Evilchumlee]

I absolutely love this and am getting the parts right now! Been looking to build a gizmo and I think this is the way to go. Don't think I have the prop-making skill to make anything close to screen accurate, and this is WAY better than finding some random circuit boards and sticking them in a holster.

I carry a PKE meter on my belt, i'm planning on making a sort of daisy chain from this to the daughter board to the PKE meter holster, as if they're all working together.

Or instead of a daughter board, I might embrace the "updated" idea and hide a portable USB charge in the tape measure holster, get a coiled USB cable, and have the daughter board be a holster for my cell phone... which I can then pretty easily add some kind of neat looking techy-something or other loop playing (and, charge my phone!)

[sbullins]

Maybe & hopefully someone can help me out, I’m a total noob to programming arduino & I just keep getting error codes when I try to install the code to the board. I’m copying straight from the website linked & I’m guessing I’m not putting things in the right area. Can anybody lend a hand

[Evilchumlee]

I put this together the other day. Works great, everything went super smooth. 100% newbie to this, I just downloaded the Arduino program, copy/pasted and... it worked!

I had an issue at first I tried to use the web-based program, which gave me error codes. Then I downloaded the program and everything worked well. I don't believe the web version downloaded the neccesary libraries, the downloaded program did as soon as I connected everything.

Now I need to assemble the rest of the gizmo.

[Evilchumlee]

Wanted to pop back in, I decided to take a different spin with this. (still) working on building a belt gizmo. I've decided to do a generally updated version, utilizing this Spengler Meter as the daughter board component. My reasoning is that that the mother board gizmo is doing the metering and detecting and all that, the daughter board is the information-receiver. I have a small bluetooth keybaord i'm thinking of rigging some wires up too it as well to give it a little computery feel hanging off my belt.

[in_the_city]

The absolutely stupid thing that I love about this build is that I feel like I'm getting strong Supernatural vibes off of it.

Like I look at it and I see Dean's homemade EMF meter.