The Sheikah Slate From Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch is one of the most popular video games of all time. With its stunning vistas, beautiful music, and vast amount of quests and adventures, it feels like you are transported into a new world! To say that this game has many different items would be an understatement. In fact, there are hundreds of items throughout the game that you can discover and collect. But no item is quite as iconic or useful as the first item you get in the game: the Sheikah Slate.

The Sheikah Slate helps you defeat enemies, solve tricky puzzles, and gives you access to cool functions like a camera or a map! Along with all of these interesting features in the game, the Sheikah Slate also looks really cool.

In this Instructable, I will help you make your own Sheikah Slate that really lights up! While it won't be able to produce bombs or stop time, it will look great for your next Halloween Costume this year or even as a devoted fan's display piece!

If you liked this Instructable, please consider leaving a like and a vote for this Instructable on the Make It Glow Contest page. I really appreciate your feedback and your votes!

Let's get started!

For this project, you will need the following

• Acrylic Paint (Black, Orange, Tan, Brown) - pictures included of exact paint I used later on
• Access to a 3D printer
• 3D printer Filament
• 4 Flat Head Phillips Machine Screws (6-32" x 1" long)
• 4 Hex Nuts (That correspond to the screws-they will be sold right next to it)
• A scrap of sand paper
• Super Glue / Hot Glue Gun
• Soldering Iron with Solder and Wire
• 12 BLUE LEDs and 12 ORANGE LEDs
• 24 220 ohm resistors
• (2) 2 AA Battery Packs
• 4 AA Batteries
• 1 Switch

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To model the Sheikah Slate, I used Fusion 360. It is free for students and hobbyists who are looking to get into 3D modeling. The platform is user-friendly and there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube and Instructables to get you started! So if you want to get involved in 3D modeling to create props like this, consider using Fusion 360.

I have also included the STL's for your convenience as well if you aren't quite to the point where you can create your own models yet. Once you have downloaded the STLs, slice the files on your preferred slicing platform and 3D print them.

Remove the support material and sand down any sharp edges.

In the inner face of the back piece, there are 4 hexagonal holes. These holes were purposefully modeled a little smaller than the actual size of the nuts so that they would be very tight and wouldn't come out under pressure.

To set the hex nuts in their respective holes, take your hot soldering iron tip and push down on the nuts. As the nuts get hot, they will begin to melt the plastic around it and sink into their correct spots. Make sure that the top surface of the nuts lay flush with the surface of the back half of the piece or it will not close properly/entirely.

This is a pretty cool trick to quickly and efficiently add threads into your 3D prints.

Some parts of the Sheikah Slate have a really profound glow to it. I thought that if I were able to get some hot glue into some of the holes where the light comes through, it would diffuse the light enough to shine vibrantly but still maintain that glowing effect.

With a piece of flat plastic (you can find this plastic just about everywhere if you look for it - I just used a piece of plastic from a strawberry container), create a seal at the bottom of the hole you are trying to fill so the glue won't leak through. Note that you may want to use a towel or something as a barrier between your hand and the plastic because the glue gets really hot. Once the glue cools down, you can remove the plastic with ease by simply peeling it off. I noticed as well if you gently tap the piece onto the surface you are working on, it will settle the glue down into whatever hole you are pouring glue and will lay flat. This is also helpful to release any air bubbles that might be trapped during the gluing process.

Continue to repeat this process until you have filled all of the holes, the front eye, and the eye pattern on the back of the Sheikah Slate. If anything spills over, just take an Exact-O knife, and trim the excess glue off.

Attached is an image of how you are going to wire the circuit together.

Basically, you are going to follow two simple rules of thumb:

1. Wire all of the resistors to the positive (longer) terminal of the LED. The resistors make sure that the LEDs due not immediate burn out when exposed to a voltage source. All of the resistors (the positive side of the LED)will share the same node.

2. Wire all of the the negative (shorter) terminals of the LED to the same node.

Note that the diagram provided does not have a lot of space in between LED lights. This is just a convention for making it more visually understandable. In your actual circuit, you will want to include longer strands of wire since each LED will be fairly spread out from the next. Be sure to reference my photo if you have any questions regarding light placement.

Finally, solder the LED circuit to the battery pack and switch as shown. The negative node of the LED's is soldered to the negative side of the battery. The positive side of the battery is attached the outer pin of the switch and the middle pin of the switch is attached to the positive LED node.

Be sure to test the circuit to make sure it works before you tie up/glue down any wires. If everything seems to be working properly, glue the switch and any stray wires into their proper place.

In order to prevent the orange and blue light from mixing together, it is necessary to create a partition between the two. This is done by simply measuring the area where the LEDs are, and cutting out a black piece of paper according to that measured area. Then, cut a hole from the center so that the blue light can enter into the front eye - despite the front eye being on the orange side.

Make sure that the paper is glued down to the center eye supports or orange light may bleed into the blue area which would make the final product look inaccurate due to color mixing.

Take the brown paint and cover the pieces with several coats until the surface completely blocks out the LED lights. Otherwise, the lights will be able to shine through the surface of the filament thus ruining the glowing effect.

Next take the orange acrylic and fill in the handle piece and the small cavities on the various surfaces.

Then, cover the back piece where the eye is locate with black paint as shown.

Finally, take the tan-ish acrylic and paint the final handle pieces, the accent pieces, and the small pieces found throughout the piece.

If there is any confusion what color certain areas need to be painted, just look at your reference photo or look at my final product as a reference.

With your plastic accent pieces painted and ready to go, it is time to attach the pieces to the surface of the Sheikah Slate.

Before gluing, carefully line up the pieces where you want them to go. Depending on the strength of the glue you use, you may only get one shot at it - so make it count.

Some people like to use bondo, others like to use cements, but I just used plain old hot glue and it seems to hold really well and is a lot less messy.

Take your 6/32" x 1" long "ancient" screws and close the two halves together. If you ever need to change out an LED or exchange the batteries, you can just remove the screws to access the interior.

Now that you have finished the Sheikah Slate, turn off the lights and flip the switch to activate it!. The blue and orange lights give off a fantastic glow - fitting for the heroes of Hyrule. Now you are ready to take on bokoblins, guardians, and lynels.

Use the Sheikah Slate as a night light, a display piece, or a prop for your next Halloween costume!

If you liked this Instructable, please consider leaving a like and a vote for this Instructable on the Make It Glow Contest page. I really appreciate your feedback and your votes!

I hope you had fun learning how to make the Sheikah Slate! If you have any questions, I will try to answer them all! I will see you on the next one!

-MM