DIY Portal turret has motion detection and laser eye

I like geeky DIY projects as much as anyone else does. I especially like them when the builder takes something cool from a video game and brings it into the real world. If you are a fan of Portal, you will recognize this DIY project right away as one of the turrets from the game. This cool project has a geek building a life-size version of that turret and equipping it with motion detection and a laser eye.

That laser eye appears to be a red laser pointer, and it looks really cool. You can see the barrels of the turret sticking out the side of the thing. This would have been truly epic had the builder managed to design air soft or NERF guns into the sides of the turret allowing it to fire bullets. The builder of the device is one Ryan Palser, and he does good work. The replica apparently took "months" for the guy to build. The laser eye is one of the coolest parts of the project and looks just like one from the game.

The motion sensor detects when someone walks up to it, and it makes bullet firing sounds play. You can also press a button to get the game theme song to play. This is a reproduction of the turret from the first version, maybe the second version with the turret from the new game will have the ability to shoot. The ability to shoot or not, this is one of the coolest video game projects I have seen.

[via Kotaku]