For your DIY Halloween costume this year, Learn how to make your own Ghostbusters Proton Pack equipt with red and green lasers (above).  There is a full tutorial on how to build your own along with a detailed photogallery of the proton pack.  An Arduino is used for basic controls of the various flashing and fading lights on the suit.

The video above walks you through some features of the DIY Halloween costume.  Included are some ecto goggles (seen below) and various other non-fuctional, but super cool-looking widgets.

The full tutorial walks you through the costume build and here’s a second tutorial to help you construct your own.  More of our favorite DIY costumes are featured below.

DIY Halloween Costumes & Projects:

• Exceptional Nerd-tastic Pumpkin Carvings
• Make your own MIB Halloween Costume
• DIY Gears of War Lancer & Chainsaw

Laser harp inventor Steven Hobley is back with another exceptional project.� We covered his outstanding laser harp build last year and was also included in our Top 40 Arduino Projects.� So what’s so cool about a harp anyways?� It’s just the incredible cool factor of a classical instrument meeting the future with wicked bright lasers now combined with a “Harp-Hero” video game interface.

A single 450-milliwatt green laser beam reflected by fast moving motorized mirror ‘creates’ multiple beams very rapidly. The variation in hand movements through the laser beams creates the flux. This symphonic change in the beam is picked up by sensor arrays connected to a Nintendo Wiimote. An impOSCar VSTi software synthesizer on a computer interprets the signals via Bluetooth and that’s how hand motion becomes music.

The innovator has shared some of the details on his website and the above video.� If you are looking for more laser projects beam over to view all of our laser projects and buy lasers from our store for your next laser project supplies.

The following is a post by Rog8811, our lasers expert. As a designer and engineer I am always looking for ways of converting everyday items into cool gadgets. This iconic lighter, known around the world, is the Zippo flip-top lighter. Having already turned a flip-top ligher into a blu-ray laser lighter I decided that I would see just how much more could be done with one.

This time round I wanted a laser spirograph projector . What follows is a tutorial that will show the major parts that are needed. All fliptop lighters are slightly different in size and shape you need to adjust sizes and positions to suit your host.� I started off by getting a host lighter engraved.

This would be neat to take to your next poker game to draw more attention than the best poker hand.

Then followed a�number of drawings to see what the options might be. There are a lot of parts to get in so everything needs to be as small as possible (obviously)

The only way I could be sure to get everything lined up was to do away with the inner slide and replace it with a machined out block of plastic with all the parts fitted. To get this as large as possible the plate in the lid that operates the lid closing catch needs to be removed, to do this drill a couple of holes through it then break it off with a pair of pliers. Remove the�rough edges�with a small grinding burr in a dremil drill.

Here are the basic dimensions for the block but, as previously stated, adjust to suit your host.

The green laser module was stripped out of a keyring pointer that ate batteries within seconds, so it was no loss. This would be heavily modified to fit as it is 12mm diameter and too long with the drive circuit attached. (there are smaller green modules available that will fit more easily but I had this one to hand). I turned this one to 10mm diameter…. the thread that holds it together is 10mm diameter and consequently I had to glue the 2 halves together with superglue wheh it fell apart, it may be better to drill out the hole it fits into to 11mm diameter and turn down the module to suit.

For a spirograph pattern to be produced a minimum of 2 rotating mirrors are required. These were cut from an acylic mirror tile, it is important to get the hole dead centre, to do this I drilled a 0.5mm hole into a piece of 7mm diameter brass, stuck the back of the acrylic to this and turned to size in a lathe, (once stuck to a mandrel you can carve the mirror to size with a craft knife). Then use a pin chuck to drill into the acrylic from the back.

The mirrors are driven by vibro motors from mobile phones. The ones used were 5mm diameter once the rubber cover was removed.

The motors and mirrors were mounted in brass shrouds to protect them from damage. The motors are held in lpace with a dab of superglue.
The mirror must be stuck on at a very slight angle so that when a laser is reflected from the spinning mirror the beam describes a small circle.

The laser and the motor assemblies were pressed into holes machined into the plastic block, all three parts were wired up to check the output beam, to get good patterns you may have to reverse the direction of one of the motors.

A Battery housing with positive and negative contacts was machined to house a rechargable 3.6v battery then wiring was started.

Wires soldered to motor 1 and battery holder

The driver for the laser and the switch were located with super glue�and wired. If only people spent more time making cool gadgets like these instead of playing online games or spending money in an online casino, we would have much more to offer. The lighter projector is great example of what can be done when you put your time and mind to it.

The other battery contact and laser module wired. (it is important to remember that green laser modules are positive ground) I soldered the battery contact to the module to stiffen it up, this connects the positive directly to the module which is no bad thing.

This is what the finished item looks like. The piece of metal on the top is a magnet�from the lens focus assembly�of a PS3 sled, it takes the place of the lid closing catch that disapeared with the inner slide of the lighter.

This is what it does…. (my camera is not fast enough to capture the patterns produced by the projector).

A longer view gives a slightly better idea of the output.

A short video of the laser can be viewed below:

• We sell quality, discount lasers in our store
• Subscribe to HacknMod for free daily updates
• See our collection of laser projects

Lasers light shows are one of most popular form of club entertainment today. If you’ve ever wanted to build your own laser show, this simple five dollar DIY laser show project. Basically, reflect a laser on to a mirror physically attached to a speaker membrane. As the speaker vibrates and produces sound waves, it also vibrates the mirror which causes multiple shapes and patterns to be projected on to the ceiling and walls.

The “lasers� you see in the video are actually one “laser.� The new concepts adapted in this project lets you use one laser to produce multiple “interferences� by using a diffraction grating. By utilizing this technology you can easily produce results similar to what the pros use, at nowhere near the cost. To see the full article which includes an introduction, laser safety guide, concepts, parts, assembly, and other notes visit the tutorial.