swmand4

To be honest, I haven't worked on this in a long time. I still want to finish it, and might get some free time about a month to resume prototyping and coding. I don't suppose anyone knows anything about reading an MP3 file off an SD card using an 8-bit micro-controller?

Good luck, you'll do great!

Quick question, Tim. Does your belt plastic have the button covers molded into it? It looks like it doesnt... maybe Rob changed his belt molds?

On the front of my own armor, more pictures keep popping up from last Halloween (even 9 months later!) I'm hoping to take my set of approval style pictures this weekend so I can get final critique from all of you fine folks before going for the real deal. Not happy my thigh ammo pack fell down a bunch - I'll have to put some E-6000 there or something to keep it in place.

Just to be clear, Steve, the photos two posts up are Jesse's armor and not mine. Jesse, I did not have any issues with my shoulders being too far from my shoulder bridges. When I made the straps/snaps connection between the shoulder bridge and the shoulder bells, I had someone help me hold the shoulder bell in place and roughly measure the length of the strap needed. It looks like you could shorten the length of your connecting strap to bring the shoulder bell up and closer to the chest plate / shoulder bridges. This might also bring your biceps up a touch (which also might look a bit better and give you more arm mobility). And, as Steve pointed out, the elastic strap around the bicep should be ~3/4" thick. Otherwise it looks pretty good!

Personally, I used 24AWG wire and coiled it around a pen.

I was hoping, against all odds, they would stick with the classic ANH stormtrooper for the new movies. But something new could be good, too. Thanks for sharing the link!

I don't know about Jesse, but I had to cut quite a bit off my thighs to make them fit better. I also seem to remember taking more off the top than the bottom... page 4 of my build thread has some pictures of it.

Looking good, Tim. I had the exact same issue with the right forearm; takes a bit of skin off each time. I actually borrowed a Dremel and sanded the ends of the forearms even more so there is no slope down towards the wrist. Looks alright and makes it easier to get your hands through. I'll post a picture when I get home tonight.

Heh, wish I'd thought to ask Rob to paint the inside of my bucket. Looks very cool. Maybe I'll buy another helmet one of these days...

Sadly, I've been too busy with work, life, and projects to get around to getting my TK#. I hope to have some time in the next couple of weeks, though.

I still have about 99 sheets of the 1/2" circular labels I used as a stencil of sorts for painting my ab buttons. If you want a sheet, send me a PM.

Well, things aren't going so great with this project right now I cannot, for the life of me, get my microcontroller to communicate with an SD card. Seeing as I've never done this before, I don't know what exactly the problem is. I do know, however, that based on the 2K of RAM the AtMega328P has, I will either need to change microcontrollers or ditch the FreeRTOS. There simply isn't enough RAM to run both an RTOS and an SD card (as I understand it, an SD card reads 512 bytes at a time, or 1/4th my entire RAM). For now, I will prove the rest of the design works in pieces and then make overall system architecture changes later. So then I moved on to SPI comms with the audio decoder chip... only to discover a pitfall involving dual uses of the 328P's reset pin. Long story short, I have no usable chips and will need to hack up a board to make it work once I get more. As I said, I will need to prove that the pieces work before moving on to redesign. I should have new MCUs Friday or Saturday. These two mistakes are quite embarrassing as I do some of this for a living. However, I use entirely different chipsets, peripherals, and tools at work. So a lot of this is a learning experience for me... As of now, I know the barrel LEDs (red&blue, but not green) work, high brightness RGB barrel tip LEDs work, ADC battery monitoring works, and the trigger (sort of) works. I still need to prove the SD card can read an MP3 file, the audio decoder chip can receive that MP3 and then play it, the green barrel propagation LEDs work, the power level bar graph works, the volume control works, the vibration motor works (should be relatively easy), the battery charge controller works, the select button works, and the fire rate selector works. After that, it should be all software and fine tuning. At least I have a lab bench set up in my garage. It's something.

Hey man, congrats on getting your RT armor! Can't wait to see the build pics start coming in.