Ghostbusters Proton Pack Sound Effect

I've seen a bunch of ads this year for a Ghostbusters costume with an inflatable proton pack. These costumes are crap! I don't care if you don't want to spend the time and effort on building a good quality costume, if I see anyone dressed up in one of these turds when I go out on Halloween, I swear I will glare at them disapprovingly! ***Oh, looking off to the right, I see that I'm insulting the sponsors! I would just like to point out that this paragraph is what is known as and should not be taken literally. I worked my ass off building this thing and it rocks so much harder than those costumes, but I won't really insult anyone wearing one. I'll just upstage them with my awesomeness.

There are many resources for building a proton pack out there. I've got from last year, as well as a more detailed instructable on how to, which could easily be scaled up to full size.

Buy Ghostbusters Electronic Proton Pack Projector: Pretend Play. I personally would have preferred sound effects over the projector (though I say that now.

I also recommend, as well as I picked up the flight suit from ebay member. This company really came through for me. The suit was good quality and very inexpensive. I am very new at this whole microcontroller thing, so I'm sure all of you veterans out there could have written a much more elegant piece of code for this. My simplistic idea for how to make this work does however have the advantage of being both very easy to understand by the uninitiated and very simple to change if you want to alter the way the lights flash. The basic concept behind the code is that it runs a loop 6.4 seconds long, broken into 64 100 millisecond 'ticks.' At each tick, I can have a light turn on, turn off, dim, brighten, etc.

After it's gone through it all once, it goes right back to the beginning and repeats until the battery runs out. Attachments •.

Lasers are awesome! I don't even care that if you aren't in a fog or a haze of tobacco smoke the beam isn't visible, it's still super cool! I got these lasers from a couple of broken pen-style laser pointers. They stopped working, I took them apart, and then I found out there was just a loose battery connection in both. I was never able to get everything crammed back in the housings though, so I harvested the electronics for my costume. I originally wanted to power everything through the Arduino, but I found that the two lasers running along with everything else drained the battery VERY quickly, so I installed them on a separate power source (2 AA batteries) shoved into the handle of the wand. I also built a trap and a pair of ecto goggles for the costume this year.

These are simply boxes cut to size, painted black, and with a bunch of doodads and widgets glued on. The trap has a 1/4' plywood base and a 1/4' plywood mounting plate on the belt. They connect with a wedged shape hunk of sheet metal I cut out with my dremel tool. The handle of the trap is also wood, but nearly everything else is just cardboard.

The ecto goggles are made out of a small cardboard box with one side cut out in the shape of my forehead. The straps were harvested from a broken headlamp. Everything on them was simply junk from my stuff drawers or screws from my screw jar. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my little 'ible and found it useful and/or amusing. I am very tired and feeling quite silly at the moment.

Please take the time to vote for me in the Arduino contest! Also, please leave me a rating or some feedback.

It's pretty late right now, and I know I wasn't too descriptive in the technical details this time, so if you need some clarification, don't be afraid to ask. Also, if you post some pictures of your own home made proton pack, post 'em in the comments below. I'll send you a DIY patch! Another idea might be to use a small cooler, like an insulated lunch box or can.

Cut out an area in the back and attach a small fan, like from a computer, and seal it up in the rear. Drop some dry ice in (internet search on where to buy this stuff but be careful! Little people program pulpit and pen. It's very COLD!) turn on the fan, and viola!! Mini FOG dispenser!

Not sure how feasable this is, but I use alot of fog for my halloween projects (elaborate garage set-up each year!) and the machines so far don't really give me the effect I want. I'm considering using dry ice this year for the egyptian tomb, complete with a mummy that sits up and animatronic Horus Guard from the Stargate movie (work in-progress!) You're a true Ghost Buster fan with your current setup!!