Makezine’s Blog has been running a series of halloween costumes based around robots. I thought I’d add mine, which has a few cool additions.
Most of the material is recycled. The entire costume was assembled from concept to treat-or-treating in about an hour and half (besides the trip to buy the materials above). The only parts I had to buy were the heating duct arms and the silver spray paint. I used some primer around the house to get a base coat on the box, to get a better silver color. The glued on parts were put on with a hot-glue gun, which seemed to hold the odd-shaped doodads well.
The Body
The basic robot is a big, spray painted silver with silver heating duct arms and legs - these are key! The heating duct arms were simply fitted into slightly smaller holes, and my child wore the legging parts over the pants.
Old CDs make cool shiny gizmos on the front. In a little ‘emergency access’ panel that opens on the lower right is a big plastic working calculator which was about $2. The kids liked opening the panel and punching the numbers.
I went a little overboard and grabbed a bunch of ‘work-in-progress’ AVR projects from my workshop and fitted them inside the costume to make blinky lights - and lots of them. The hit was a 4×4 LED grid of lights powered by an ATmega16 that moved in a cool repeating pattern. The idea that this costume probably had more computing power than the Apollo space capsule was pretty amazing.
The body also used a string of LED christmas lights. I punched holes in the body and then hotglued the lights into place, with the battery box switch in a spot my child could reach it.
The tubes in the back are old aquarium filter tubes - any plastic tube, thick or thin should do the trick. Cut a hole and hot-glue them in…
A last minute addition (incorporated partway through the trick-or-treating evening) was the candy-power slot. We cut a rectangular slot in the front, almost like a mail-drop slot and then hotglued a little box behind it. When people put candy in the slot, my child would do a little dance. The little dial to the right of the drop box is a ‘power meter’ (controllable from inside the costume) which would go to zero each time my child approach a new candy-bearing stranger. As they put candy in, it would ratchet up, much to the amusement of all involved (but especially my child!)
Candy acquisition nearly tripled after this, people would drop handful after handful of candy in the slot.
The Helmet
The helmet uses an insert from a kids toy package which had plastic around three sides of the box, making a nice wrap around transparent curved panel that maintained good visibility - important for safety. Some of the robot costumes I’ve seen featured had dicey visibility, and combined with the awkwardness of a robot costume, that’s not a good combination. The helmet used some interesting looking pieces from a K-nex set for antennae. The helmet was not attached to the costume for easy removal, ventilation and frequent candy ingestion stops.
Overall, a fun easy, build and a lot more interesting than a store bought costumes. My child enjoyed gathering and placing the miscellaneous items on the body, although I handled the hot glue gun.
I’ve enjoyed reading about the ones on Make and I hope I’ve given you a few ideas as well!
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