When I bought my first levitron (tm) anti gravity globe on ebay, I knew immediatly I'd hack it to do something different with it. A levitating Death Star was a pretty good candidate, the other possibilities were a simple landspeeder (boring) or a Thermal Detonator but my friend did succeed in rotocasting one so... Plus the Death Star has its Lethal Ray and that was the opportunity to do some customs electronics.
Project Details & build log
First of all, I dismantled the globe using a dremel. Testing the accepted weight, my Maul hologram is the guinea pig ! I used a flashlight reflector to get the death star look.
►Quick prototyping of a zigbee remote control with 2 buttons. One of them was initially used to control a rumbing motor supposed to make the DS spinning a bit to simulate the positionning before shooting the green laser. Not enough torque and a bigger motor was too heavy : replaced it with a simple red LED.
►Primer & bondo time... Then electronic test, recharge port using USB...
►Epoxy the Laser optic using JB weld & first levitation test.
►An idea of the scale of the system.
►USB mini-B connectors to recharge the lipo batteries. No, it's not a USB flash disk.
►Power switch and RF link green LED
►The laser works great ! I modified the optic to get a green dot plus some aura, looks more powerfull than just a dot when hitting the surface of a wall. And no cheating, it levitates for real. Balancing the weight of the internal electronics was NOT that simple !
When I bought my first levitron (tm) anti gravity globe on ebay, I knew immediatly I'd hack it to do something different with it.
