Wearable technology / cosplay
This project is an adaption of a project I found online and the full details can be found here https://www.instructables.com/Resistance-Is-Futile-How-to-Become-the-BORG/
As with many projects I adapted some of the steps and have listed them below.
The printing of the main components
- I printed parts Borg arm 1, 2 and 3 in vase mode using black PLA. This drastically reduced the print time and whilst a certain amount of definition was lost it was more than acceptable for what I wanted visually and structurally.
- As soon as these parts came off the printer I tidied up in the insides of each part and lined it with sticky back felt.
- I printed Borg arm 4 but had to modify the tallest part of the print to allow a greater motion in the servo motor
- I printer two lots of Borg arm 6 rather than part 5 and 6 as I felt this was better visually
Electronics
- I used a Raspberry Pi Pico rather than Arduino Nano and powered it from a 5V phone charger rather than a 9V battery
- To add interest and effects I used a mixture of colour changing LEDs and static LEDs
- To Borg arm 4 I added a small laser
- The LEDs, laser were all powered from the 3V3 (out) pin and Ground with the components wired in parallel.
- Both servos were connected to 3v3 (out) pin, ground and GPIO 15 and were controlled with a simple circuit python script (see here for getting started with servos and the Pico https://www.youngwonks.com/blog/How-to-use-a-servo-motor-with-the-Raspberry-Pi-Pico
Cable management
- Cable management was important and I wanted to keep cables either hidden inside the arm or used as part of the decoration
- For larger runs of cable and to offer support I printed two version of this cable cover, one big and one small. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7572