Boba’s Chest Display

Boba Fett has a little digital readout on his left chestplate. Here’s some of the process I went through to simulate it!

(Above) first, I learned just enough electrical engineering to modify what’s called a trace circuit to match the timing and sequence of the blinking LEDs on Boba’s chest display. You can find tons of tutorials and breakdowns of trace circuits online. I also bought all the components I would need (plus a biiiit extra)

Next I made a mock-up using a breadboard, which lets you test circuits without doing any soldering, to make sure my design worked—it did! Once I knew it worked, I got to soldering. There are actually two boards connected with some standard network cable (just needed something with at least seven wires). This way I could keep the board with the actual LEDs small enough to go behind the chest plate unnoticed. Above is the LED board made with some generic prototype board. I accidentally fried the first timer board, so for the second version I went a little fancier:

For V2 of the timer board, I decided to try a free online electronics CAD program to make a schematic for an actual PCB. In the future I will absolutely do this for any electronics I make, it is very cheap to order the boards, and they are SO much easier, sturdier and potentially smaller than a cobbled together prototype board.

Then I soldered all my components to the PCB. After testing it and making sure it all worked, I made a little enclosure to hold the battery, timer board, and a switch. This enclosure goes into one of my utility belt pockets, and the wire goes up underneath the bodysuit and vest to connect to the board on the chest plate.

Stick it behind some transparent film with the characters/lines that match Boba’s, and we’re golden! Oh I also put some thin foam over the LEDs to diffuse the light a bit. Cheers!