I Am Iron Man!

[JonnyMac]

Okay, I'm not, but that subject line probably caused you to look, right?  ;D

Hollywood can be tough, but one of the benefits for me is getting to work with some extraordinarily gifted artists.  One of them is my friend, Ian Goodwin, who is a make-up and FX artist.  Ian called me a few weeks ago needing a dimmer PCB for an Whiplash (bad guy in Iron Man II) costume that he's building for a client.  The first image is a close-up of the arc reactor in the costume, the second is the PCB I made for Ian.

In order to give Ian dimming and a bit of animation I used a PIC processor (for the first time).  Brad at the RMG introduced me to this little PIC that has a built-in regulator which simplified the design.  The board has a pot on the back to control brightness and an option jumper causes the LEDs to rotate (light the big arc reactor in the first movie does).

Next week I'll be able to share another one of my "Hollywood" electronics projects (that will be unveiled at BlizzCon this weekend).

[gadget-evilusions]

That's really cool.

How did you make the PCB round? That would really help a project I have been working on.

[JonnyMac]

With a Dremel tool and a file!

The board is an ExpressPCB Miniboard Pro with the outline drawn in the silkscreen layer.  It only took a few minutes to cut it down and smooth it out.

[gadget-evilusions]

Well now that's just too simple. Thanks.

[JonnyMac]

I just received some pix from Ian of the completed costume -- very cool stuff.

[bsnut]

I can say it really cool, Jon. Pics in Hollywood makes things like this really cool ;D

[JonnyMac]

Ian in an incredibly talented guy.  Nice guy, too.