More IKEA stuff

I have plans for this simple IKEA step stool, but first it needed something on it to protect it. It's not as orange as it looks in the photo, it's actually red.

We need guns, lots of guns...

For Lasertag next year I want an assortment of guns to choose from. For our first couple of years we've been making do with just some pistols. Having made the Skorpion machine pistol, I'm moving on to these two.

The Mossberg body is a cheap Airsoft springer which is nice and solid but light. It fits nicely in my partner's hands so I can see her using it a bit.

The AK47 is a cheap kid's toy which I bought after one of the other taggers bought the first one and deemed it good for converting. It's almost full size apart from the stock and comes with a passable sound/light board that I might try to re-use to keep the build super-easy and cheap.

The AK will definitely be a quick and dirty conversion so will only look good from a distance but I want it to NPC the Fallout game we're doing in the summer. Bashing it about and grunging it up a bit should make it look the part.

Once I've done these two I may splash real money on a good metal rifle body as I'll have some gun building under my belt and hopefully have learned some of the pitfalls.

Don't expect it to last

It's a £3 broken water pistol of finest pound shop quality given a coat of paint and some glue to fix the busted bits.

It looks kind of cool but never ever kid yourself it'll last very long. It may be dead by the end of the LARP I built it for.

We love IKEA too

Having made the brain in a jar I needed something to act as a stand for it. I also wanted to make the business end something that I can re-purpose for multiple props, as a brain in a jar is always useful.

For the first go at the stand it needed to be compact and quick to throw together. It occurred to me that some time back I bought a set of metal desk organisers from IKEA so that I could turn one of them into my medical scanner. Being clean and white gave that a strong 'medical' look which would work for the brain too.

So I fitted a square acrylic base  the same size as the IKEA box to the brain and mounted it to the box with four bolts. This is a nice generic fitting that will allow me to bolt it onto something else later if I feel like it.

The box has precious little inside, an Arduino Nano, socket for the mains PSU and on/off switch. It is however big enough for an RPi if I want to make it speak later.

Here it is complete and running, although the video doesn't show the colour cycling very well.

Brain installed on time and under budget

I have a brain in a jar. OK it's a little lacking in any means of support right now but look at the pretty lights!

I love cheap stuff

Not quite sure what I was going to make next for a bit of fun, this weekend offered up glorious bounty. Tiger is great for random stuff although I'm sure somebody will be along to tell me how awfully unethical their business model is or something.

I however now have several foam brains thanks to this. At least one will end up in a jar.

Also we bought a ridiculous, slightly broken but cheap water pistol from a petrol station. A good spot by my partner that should be excellent for all manner of daft campy sci-fi LARP once painted up a bit.

One day it may shoot lasertag. Just because it's there.