Hackaday Builds Portal Gun That Actually Levitates A Companion Cube

Okay, so this isn't quite an accurate replica of Valve's esteemed gravity gun, or a meaningful bid towards reaching a real-life equivalent to it, but even so it serves well as a hardware love letter of sorts to the company – an amalgamation of inventions from Portal and the seminal Half-Life 2, all in one pretty neat package.

Brought to us by Hackaday and a project driven by the desire to “build a working gravity gun”, it's a Portal gun re-purposed and modified to actually 'levitate' a custom-made Companion Cube – an object that has infuriated our puzzle gaming pursuits and brought joy to our hearts in equal measure over the past couple of years. With what now has to be a Valve fans' most sought-after mantelpiece decoration, Hackaday's modification is actually a pretty simple one, but the effect is no less impressive.

Volpin Props' brilliant gravity gun replica.Using an off-the-shelf Portal toy gun rather than a hard-to-find re-production of the gravity gun – Hackaday has obviously not been in touch with Volpin Props, who created this (right) phenomenal replica for charity Child's Play – the team settled on re-purposing the coil, magnet and micro-controller (a sensing circuit which creates the 'illusion' of levitation by fluctuating the current passing through the electromagnet) from a bog-standard 'floating globe', and made a foam Companion Cube to complete the effect.

Sound sweet? Check out the video below, or head on over to Hackaday's own project page to learn more.

Richard Birkett