John Edgar Park’s latest build is a life-sized replica of Lúcio’s Sonic Amplifier, the weapon that belongs to one of Overwatch’s more popular heroes. This blaster mimics the gun’s in-game abilities to both “shoot” music and switch songs when its lights toggle between yellow and green.
Park decided to make the Sonic Amplifier after falling in love with its design. “Compared to other game guns, I knew this one could be much more faithfully and safely reproduced,” he says. “Sure, it can’t physically boop anybody off a ledge, but otherwise it closely replicates its in-game counterpart.”
The blaster uses an Arduino-compatible microcontroller for the NeoPixel LEDs, and both an Adafruit MP3 player shield and sound effects board for the music and gun noises. Fitting all of these electronics into the gun’s compact body proved to be the hardest part of the build. “I swear it looked like so much room when I started,” Park says, “but in the end it was really cramped.”
With the blaster complete, Park is already tossing around a couple ideas for future projects. Although there are currently no concrete plans for any more Overwatch-related builds, he’s not opposed to the idea. He’s considered adding a way to connect an iPod shuffle to the Sonic Amplifier and using the gun as a stylish speaker, or, turning to another Overwatch hero, using a carbon dioxide canister to make a functional version of Mei’s Endothermic Blaster.
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