Back in late October Engadget.com announced that they were going to host a second annual Engadget Halloween Costume Contest. Being the geek that I am I decided that I wanted to enter the contest just a few days before the deadline, despite not actually having a costume. This year I hadn’t planned to make a costume because… well…. I’m lazy. Being inspired by the thought of perhaps being placed upon a pedestal for one day of geeky glory I decided to build a costume - to the max. It took me an entire evening to think up what could show up the previous years winner, a semi functional enormous digital camera. The camera costume had a working LCD, how was I supposed to top that? With two LCD’s of course! The only gadget I could think of with two screens was a Nintendo DS, and so it began. The problem with building a Nintendo DS Lite costume is the issue of functionality. What good is a costume if it doesn’t work to some extent? Right off the bat I knew that I had to somehow figure out how to get two screens and make the bottom one touch screen. I went to bed the first night thinking of how I was going to pull this off.

The next day I approached my roommate with the concept. I told him that I wanted to hook up my Macbook laptop as the top screen and my 19″ Dell flat panel as the bottom screen. The only problem with this is the extent that my Macbook opens. Even with the screen bent all the way back, the bottom half is still sticking way out. How was I going to fit that into the design? “Nay” he said, “for I have a tablet laptop, and it shall be leet”. He didn’t say it like that, but when I reminisce I like to pretend he’s down with biblical lingo. Now I had not only a computer that’s self-powered, but I have the ability to use a touch screen for the bottom screen. That’s the way God meant DS costumes to be.

I now find myself later that day at the local Home Depot with my roommate and girlfriend. From the first concepts that I had of the costume I knew that I wanted to use PVC piping for a frame. PVC pipes are pretty much LEGOs for grownup nerds. We bought a plethora of connectors after working out the ballpark number that we would need to connect everything. I then grabbed about 40 feet of 3/4 inch PVC piping and a new dremel head to cut the pipe. All together I spent about $60 on parts at Home Depot.
We got back to my apartment and started measuring out the cuts (measure twice, cut once). Throughout the evening we cut pipe with a dremel on the dining room table and pieced together the frame. Once we had the frame set up we decided to call it a night.

Day three, and the final day of the Engadget contest. I woke up unusually early (11 A.M.) to head to the mall to buy parts to finish the project. I was still missing just about everything besides the frame and screens. I wandered aimlessly trying to find an item perfectly shaped and colored to be the buttons on the DS. At some point I found myself in the dollar store cruising the aisles and I wandered across the perfect item, measuring cups. They were perfectly shaped, sized and colored to represent buttons. I bought four sets ($5) and quickly made my way to Michaels to find an item for the D-pad and the plastic skin covering the whole thing. At Michaels I found a large square piece of Styrofoam ($5) used primarily for making floral arrangements. Since I was running out of time I figured it would do so I bought it and then ran over to the Office Depot across the street to find an item to use for the plastic skin for the DS. I originally wanted to use foam core to cover the outside of the DS, but after seeing the price tag for foam core I decided against it. Since the outside of the DS is the largest part, I knew it wouldn’t be cheap or easy to find a perfect item. I eventually ended up buying a couple large cardboard boxes, some packing tape and a roll of white paper ($20). I then looked at my cellphone to check the time and realized I had class in ten minutes.

“Screw class, I have a gigantic DS to make” I said to myself. I skipped class that day and chose to spend the rest of my day finishing the DS costume so I could submit it before the contest deadline of midnight. I went home, dremeled off the handles on the measuring cups, covered the PVC with cardboard and taped two layers of white paper on top of everything. This process took me just as long as coming up with and executing the PVC frame step. My roommate helped me place the tablet notebook and flat panel monitor into their spots using a lot of clear packing tape. By the time it was all over I was exhausted. You can see from the video some of the work that went in to putting it all together.

I turned in a video and image of my work to the contest email address with a few hours left before deadline and anxiously waited for them to post the results. I waited a week, no follow ups. Two weeks, still no mention of the entries or winners. Three weeks, not a word has been spoken. I was going crazy because all of my friends wanted to know if I won anything. I emailed Engadget 19 days after the contest deadlined, asking them to please write a follow up.

What I’m most upset about is that Engadget never even displayed the contest submissions. I don’t mind whether or not there’s a prize involved, but when I invest my time and money into a project like this I expect some sort of recognition. I contacted Engadget a few weeks after the contest deadline expired asking them to please post the contest submissions, whether or not they intended on awarding any prizes. I would love to see what people submitted just to see how creative some people might have been. I found another user’s image gallery on Flickr as seen posted on the contest comments area.

To this day I still have friends and family asking me “what ever happened with that costume contest”? Every time I hear that I slouch a little more in my chair and think about that time and money that I wasted for a costume that never left my apartment. At least I can say that it was my best costume yet.

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