Half-Life Alyx Inspired Ammo Counter Glove for Nerf Gun Wars

This project was a collaboration to create a video-game inspired interactive glove for counting ammo and hits in a Nerf war. Based on the gravity gloves from Half-Life: Alyx, the heavily simplified design of the glove makes it much easier to use in a real-world setting.

Materials:

• black glove
• black knit fabric
• snap closure or velcro
• adafruit circuit playground
• thin conductive wires (stolen from an old phone charger)
• battery pack + batteries
• a nickel
• pin LED lights

Tools:

• pliers
• screwdriver
• needle + black thread
• hot glue gun + hot glue
• soldering iron + solder

Place the glove on your hand and mark your cuts with a white pen or chalk. Take the glove off, cut, and check the fit after, making adjustments as needed.

While wearing the glove, place the circuit playground in the desired position and mark placement guides with a white pen. I chose to mark inside of the circuit board's pinholes.

To avoid sewing the circuitboard on while wearing the glove, I made a cardboard cutout of my hand to hold the glove's shape instead. Once on the cutout, take a needle and thread and handsew the board to the glove, using the dots as a guide. I chose to sew the board on at four attachment points to allow the glove fabric to stretch and shift as needed. (Tip: to keep the circuit board in place as you sew, attach it first with a small dot of hot glue on the center back of the board.)

Take each leg of the LED and wrap it around something thin and round, like a small screwdriver. Cut off the excess wire on the end, and crimp the loop together with pliers. Be sure to indicate which leg is the positive and which is the negative by coloring it with a sharpie or tying a small knot around one of the legs with thread. (This is important for attaching it to the circuit playground later!)

Because the lights are so small, I first attatched them with a tiny bit of hot glue to fix them in position. From there, you can take your needle and thread and secure the lights permanently by sewing the legs of the lights into the fabric.Try to avoid sewing through the loops you created. Instead, aim for the straight section right above them, closer to the light itself.

To add the button on the thumb side of the glove, I soldered a nickel to a wire and connected the other end to a pin on the circuitboard. After that, I flipped the nickel over to hide the soldering and hot glued it into place. For the wires connecting the LEDs, thread each exposed end of wire through the loops and the pins on the circuitboard in the order: pin>positive>(light)>negative>ground. Check that each light is working properly before soldering into place.

Cut armband fabric to size based on your arm and battery pack measurements. From there, fold it in half hotdog style with the good side facing in. Sew a zig-zag stitch along the raw edge, creating a long fabric tube. Flip the tub right-side out, position the seam in the middle of the armband and press. Wrap the armband around something similar to the size of your arm (I used a bottle of hand sanitizer) and allow the ends to overlap. Sew a line of stitches on each of the raw edges and test the fit of the battery pack in the pocket. One raw edge will be facing the inside of the armband, and the other will be on the outside.

On the bottom of the battery pocket, take a small piece of matching fabric, tuck the ends inside the pocket, and stitch it in place to hold the battery pack. On the top of the battery pocket, take a longer, thinner strip of fabric and tuck the end of it inside the pocket, stitching in place. Mark where this longer strip reaches on the front of the battery pack, and mark just above that for the location of the snap. Hand stitch one part of the snap on that mark, and the other part on theslong strip to complete the closure.

Beofre uploading code, check how all the pieces fit and admire your work so far!

Now you're ready to upload your code! Connect the circuit board to your computer and follow the instructions on the makecode website to transfer the file.

Link to Code used here

The lights on the fingers indicate whether you are in mode 1 (blue) or mode 2 (red). You can then press the A and B buttons to add or subtract the lights shown on the circuitboard and track ammo or hits on other players. When you press the nickel button, the lights turn to half blue and half red, and activates the mode that mimics the gravity gloves in Half-Life: Alyx. Tilting the glove up mimics selecting an item by triggering the fingerlights, and jerking your hand backwards sets off an animation on the light ring and a whooshing sound effect.