Building a Star Wars Outlaws-Style Wrist Communicator for Use at Galaxy’s Edge

Sci-fi is always a great source of inspiration for projects, because it is full of imaginative technology that typically isn’t commonplace in the real world. The fiction out there is almost limitless, but the Star Wars franchise is as popular as sci-fi gets. In the recent Star Wars Outlaws video game, the main protagonist wears an interesting bit of a tech: a communicator on her wrist. Inspired by that, 3DSage made his own wrist-worn communicator to talk to his friend Ben at the Galaxay’s Edge theme park.

3DSage figured that, for this application, the “communicator” would basically act the same as a walkie talkie. He and Ben would both be fairly close together within the theme park, after all. With that in mind, he saved himself a lot of work by starting with an off-the-shelf consumer walkie talkie for kids. Those are very affordable, which let 3DSage buy a handful of different models to disassemble and evaluate.

Because space was at a premium, 3DSage focused on models that were compact. One even came in a wristwatch form factor. After receiving those, 3DSage took them all apart to see which would work best for the project. He paid particular attention to the size of the PCBs inside. Ultimately, he selected an adorable little walkie talkie set that costs less than $14.

To make the walkie talkies work for their new purpose, 3DSage designed a 3D-printable enclosure that attaches to a leather wrist strap. He even designed an additional PCB for the buttons to make them fit into the new enclosure.

But that technical achievement was only half of the challenge. 3DSage also wanted the communicators to fit the Star Wars aesthetic, which meant they needed to look like they had seen serious use.

3DSage took one walkie talkie communicator and Ben took the other. Each put a lot of time into carefully painting, decorating, and weathering their communicator enclosures. They put their own spins on the design, but they both look like they’re part of the same universe, since they’re based on the same underlying enclosure.

With the communicators done, the only thing left to do was try them out. 3DSage and Ben headed to Galaxy’s Edge to explore the park in costumes made complete with the wrist communicators. And whenever they lost track of each other, they could get in touch to regroup.