Rick and Morty Portal Gun
Engineering Projects That Showcase My Expertise
Rick and Morty Portal Gun
A replica of Rick’s portal gun from the TV show Rick and Morty. This replica prop mimics the use in the TV show by projecting a rotating portal pattern on walls with light and sound effects.
Features
- Portal Projection: A rotating spiral patterned “portal” gets projected on walls using a green laser and a spiral diffraction grating connected to a motor.
- Sound Effects: Portal opening and closing sound clips taken from the TV show play when the portal turns on and off.
- Hexadecimal Display: Displays the “dimension” the portal goes to. “Dimension” can be increased, decreased, randomized, or reset using the encoder button control knob.
- Low Power Mode: The board enters a deep sleep low power mode while the battery is plugged in to charge.
Technology and Components
- 3D Printed Body: The prop was 3D modeled from scratch to be as accurate as possible to the TV show.
- Custom PCB: My first custom designed PCB had to go through two rounds of prototyping to fit in the tight dimensions of the portal gun.
- Microcontroller: The project uses an Adafruit itsybitsy microcontroller due to it’s small size, large number of DIO pins, and commercially available Lithium ion battery charger attachment.
- Hexadecimal Display: A hexadecimal display was used to display the current “dimension” in both numbers and letters.
- Sound Board: A separate sound board is used to store and play audio files.
- Laser Diode and Control Circuit
- DC Motor and Control Circuit
Outcome
- The portal gun was an outstanding success, looking just as good as I initially envisioned. The only thing that I would change is the motor design. Since the project has finished, the pulley rotating the diffraction grating has stretched out and does not spin the diffraction grating as well. Replacing the pulley system with gears may need to happen in the future.