A team of designers has created a functioning Pip-Boy 3000 as an entry for a NASA Space App Challenge.
Despite the fact that they take place in a literal nuclear wasteland, the Fallout games aren’t lacking for cool stuff that we’d very much like to have and play with in the real world. Chief among these, of course, is the Pip-Boy. With you pretty much from the word go, the Pip-Boy serves as your wrist-mounted guide to pretty much everything involving yourself in-game. It’s a device that’s understandably earned itself a lot of fans who, in turn, have spawned some nifty replicas over the years. That said, while many have looked the part, most have been a step or two shy from delivering the real deal.
Enter Ashley Hennefer and a team of tech designers who recently fashioned themselves a custom, functioning version of Fallout 3‘s Pip-Boy 3000 which they then submitted to a NASA Space Apps Challenge centered on creating wearable tech for astronauts. Unlike previous Pip-Boy replicas, the group’s iteration features several custom programs and gadgets to help it function as an actual useful tool.
The team’s Pip-Boy feature’s real-time mapping, a working Geiger counter and other environmental sensors that the wearer can use to quickly learn information about their body and their surroundings to determine their well-being and the condition and safety of their environment. The Pip-Boy is furthermore able to transmit all of its collected data to a Web HQ so it can be viewed by others at separate locations. The team intends to update the current model so personnel using the Web HQ can send the wearer messages that can be responded to with simple touch screen responses. The Pip-Boy casing itself was created from a 3D printed model available here.
Now, of course, when you get down to it, unless you actually were an astronaut with an understandable need to keep your hands free, this custom Pip-Boy probably wouldn’t be necessary. Most of us don’t need a Geiger counter and Google Maps generally hits the spot when it comes to getting people from point-A to point-B. That said, after seeing such a full realization of the gadget, it’s hard not to want one. Arguments of impracticality only go so far when they’re up against something so cool.
Source: Space Apps Challenge
