I wanted a Back-to-the-Future Flux Capacitor in my workshop because I love the films, and it's one of the most iconic scifi props. Replicas can get pricey, but I found this affordable model that came in a limited-edition themed Yahtzee game (it's discontinued now, but still available on eBay). It has two problems though: it runs on batteries, and the LEDs only activate on vibration and cut off automatically after seven cycles. So I decided to hack it. 

I started by removing the tilt sensor and replacing it with a jumper. Then I desoldered the board's timer chip, and soldered wires directly to the LED paths and ground. With those in place, all I had to do was connect them to an Arduino and write a quick script to control the LEDs. Now I can have the lights run continuously, and the whole thing is powered via USB. While I was at it, I also created a diffuser with a few layers of tracing paper, which makes it look a bit nicer IMHO.

I’m a big fan of the Portal series, so I had to have a GLaDOS robot mounted on my pegboard. This is what I came up with:

The head is 3d-printed and hand-painted. The rest of the build is made of servos, metal brackets, a PWM servo driver, a QT PY ESP32, and a motion sensor.

I love Fallout’s Pipboy (wrist computer), but the truth is it’s too big and clunky to actually be a daily worn device. I wanted to see if I could make a smartwatch with a similar vibe, but in a form factor small enough to be worn daily in the real world.

I decided to build this around Adafruit’s ESP32-S2 Reverse TFT board. This board is fairly tiny, and it has built-in features that I needed

• on-board wifi
• tft screen
• battery charging capability
• accessible buttons

I designed, 3d printed, and painted a case for the board that I think captures some of the Pipboy aesthetic. It’s held together with heat-set inserts and allen screws. Inside is a rechargeable lithium battery and a tilt sensor. The tilt sensor automatically turns the screen off when you’re not looking at the watch in order to extend battery life. The USB port can be accessed on the side without removing the case. The case can be used with any 22mm watch strap, but I had some nice scrap leather, so I just made my own leather cuff band.

The way the watch works, is that on reset it gets the time and date from online NTP servers while connected to my home wifi. Then the ESP32-S2’s internal clock handles keeping track of time until the time is updated via NTP servers again. This seems to work well. (Traditionally, you would use a Real Time Clock or GPS module to keep accurate time, but that would have made the watch bulkier.) Likewise, I use OpenWeatherMap’s API to get weather data to the watch daily. I plan to add additional functionally in the future, but for now I’m happy with my Pipboy Mini.

CODE
Case STL File