Chest Display using an Iphone/Ipod... Thoughts?

[GeekdadX7]

Hi guys, I'm a long time lurker, but this is my first actual post.
I'm nearly finished with a rotj boba fett build (not totally screen accurate, but close enough for my deadline of halloween, I can make it better later).

I was in the process of trying to do the cheap DIY chest display from TK409, where you just use the blinking bicycle lights and transparent printouts for a cheap/ghetto looking chest display, and then last night at around 1am I stumbled upon something on youtube and had an idea, which I have nearly finished... and was wondering if anyone else has done anything like it or has any pointers?

I noticed that an extremely awesome person posted a 10 minute video, a close up (and cropped) of their LED Boba Fett chest display blinking through 10 minutes of sequence. I had an idea, which if it'd work, would look 1,000x better than the cheap "blinking light behind transparent printout" display.

I used a firefox add on to download the chest display video from youtube, put it into a cheap video editing program, rotated/resized it with the project settings.... and then copied and pasted that little 10 minute clip over and over and over in the program, to make it so that the 6 minute video of the chest display would play over and over and over for 6 hours.

I loaded it into itunes, put it on my oooooold iphone 4, charged the battery to 100%, and then pressed play on the video.

It is an extremely bright and clear (it is an mp4 video after all playing on an iphone) chest display video, that played for 6 hours straight and used 80% of the iphone 4's battery.

I will post a video of it later tonight if anyone is interested to see what the video looks like on the phone.... but my thought is that instead of having to pay $90 for a full on pro made digital display from tk409 or one of the other display builders..... that for the price of FREE, I have a 6 crystal clear video of the display going, where i can just velcro/attach the phone's screen to the back of the chest armor, so that the display lines up with the cuttouts in the armor.

Have other people done that before? If so, any success with it, or thoughts?

Here is a link to the video clip on youtube that I found:

When you put it into a video program and rotate the picture, and then it's shown on the small screen of an ipod, it comes out really bright and clear, not blurry like it shows on a large monitor.

 

[shenphong]

thats pretty brilliant...I was trying to think of a cheap way to do it for my sister's costume. This is very helpful

 

[Artakha]

That's an idea...

 

[DeathProof]

I like the idea, but wonder what kind of bulk the phone creates under the armour compared to just the circuit board.

 

[GeekdadX7]

I wish I could tell you DeathProof. I have an autistic 4yr old daughter that told me in july that she wanted to be "Darf Vado" for Halloween, and wanted me to be "Bubba Fitt".. Which is what started me going crazy with trying to get this done.

I made her a little suit of pink vader armor with advice/help from the guys at the 501st sith detachment, then started on my boba fett rotj WIP.

I made some parts, but commissioned the bulk of the suit from a costumer on Etsy based in the UK.

I've been expecting my parts from him to get here so I can then install the iphone behind the chest plate and post pics.

Unfortunately I had to file a claim yesterday because I haven't gotten my stuff yet. Logged into etsy today to check the claim status.... The guy deleted his account and ran.

Sucks arse.
No bubba fitt to walk with darth rachel now.

Won't be able to do an update on the iphone chest display for a while now.

 

[Fett 4 Real]

If it were me...and I didn't care about having the accurate parts (yes there area accurate LEDs and such) I would get an old Ipod touch or old phone to do this.... build something out of styrene or metal to slide it into.

As far as bulk.... the Fettronics display is pretty slim, while the hotpockets display is a bit more bulky with the connectors on the back.... I think a phone would be slimmer then the hotpockets

 

[GeekdadX7]

Was thinking something along those lines. The iphone 4 is 3/8" thick. My old ipod touch is 1/4" thick. I might need to go find that old thing.

 

[Jesuit24]

Gonna give this a shot. Just wondering what codec/dimensions/file options you chose to make the final 6 hour video. I'm struggling to get even half way through rendering before I run out of memory and Sony Vegas dies on me, and even that ends up being a 3gb file.

 

[GeekdadX7]

It's an mp4 so it'll play ok on my iphone. Because my armor never got here, I never actually got to try to resize the video if needed to make it fit perfectly in the cut out display of the chest armor. I'll upload the file into a folder on my website and post the link to the file so that you can download it later tonight to try it out. At the most, you may just have to make the display a lil bit bigger, or a lil bit smaller to fit perfectly in the armor cut out. I was hoping to have it tested and done a week or two ago, but my armor builder guy decided to go run to the outer rim.

Will post a link for you later tonight. Scouts honor ;-)
Right now it's a 1gb file.

 

[GeekdadX7]

Hiya Jesuit, uploading it to my server didn't work *grumbles at godaddy* so I put it on dropbox. I'll keep the file active there for as long as I have space, which should be a while.
Seeing that I don't personally have chest armor yet, I don't have the ability to perfect the positioning/size of the digital reading on the video, so please feel free to resize and move the display in the movie however it needs to be to get it to work. You can crop the clip, move it around, whatever you need to do to make it actually positioned properly.... and let me know when you get it positioned and rendered, I'd love to have a copy of it.

Here's the link to the dropbox file:
6hr MP4 chest display video for iphone display.
Dropbox - 480x288-6hours.mp4

The current project size is 480px by 288px.
It's set up right now to play with the phone held up in "portrait" view.