Homemade LED Helmet

September 6, 2013 by Marsh 11 Comments

LEDHelmet

We’ve all seen Daft Punk helmet builds, but [George’s] project is a homemade LED helmet that takes no shortcuts and packs the visor full of hundreds of individual lights. He started with a prototype that uses a PIC 18F4580 microcontroller connected to a MAX7221 LED driver, which gave him control over some dot matrix displays to test the wiring and sample script. He then used this prototype setup to develop a scrolling text function.

With testing complete, [George] wired hundreds of LEDs into 8×8 block sections, using a cardboard jig to keep everything straight. He could have stopped there, but [George] took the build further, adding an LCD display and a 7-segment clock module to the inside of the helmet, in view of the wearer. The clock displays the helmet’s current beats per minute rate, while the LCD shows the content being displayed (pattern, text / Pacman, stripes). It’s possible to see out between the bottom of the display and the chin of the helmet. If you need better visibility we’d recommend a bike helmet matrix that isn’t as dense.

You can watch a video of the helmet running different patterns below. (Warning: music). When you’re done with that, why not LED all the things: from Infinity Mirrors to LED Sneakers.

Continue reading “Homemade LED Helmet” →

As Millenials Grow Up Do They Demand Cooler LED Sneakers?

August 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

flora-LED-sneakers

We’re hoping that whomever came up with the idea of integrating LEDs into children’s shoes is kicking back on a beach somewhere living off the residuals of the idea. We see those things everywhere. Now the real question is, if you grew up with LEDs in your shoes do you expect cooler light up kicks as you age? [Becky Stern] must think so and that’s why she’s showing off Adafruit’s addressable LED strip shoe project called Firewalker.

This is prototype rather than product, so you can see the Arduino compatible Flora board on the ankle of the lit shoe above. There’s also a battery pack hitching a ride on the laces. But those worried about that fashion faux pas can work on a more finished driver that straps to your calf, or can be integrated in the insole.

Lighting patterns are set off by Velostat, a pressure-sensitive conductive sheet that goes in the heel of the insole. The Flora board measures the resistance, triggering a light show (embedded below) when it drops. Now we just need someone to integrate a power generator based on your movement.

Continue reading “As Millenials Grow Up Do They Demand Cooler LED Sneakers?” →

Laser Cut Arc Reactor Replica

August 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

laser-cut-arc-reactor

We’re starting to become a repository for Arc Reactor replica projects. The one shown above uses mostly laser cut components. We missed it back in May when [Valentin Ameres] tipped us off the first time. But he sent it in again after seeing the 3D printed version earlier this month.

Our biggest gripe is that we don’t have our own laser cutter to try this out on. Everything has been cut from 2mm thick acrylic. The black, silver, and copper colored components were painted to achieve this look. Many of the clear parts also had a dot matrix etched into them to help with light diffusion.

Basic assembly just required the parts be glued together. The finishing touches include wire-wrapping the slots of the outer ring and adding LEDs and current limiting resistors.

The plans are not freely available, but the 3D printed version linked above doubles as a 123D tutorial. That should help get you up to speed designing your own if you are lucky enough to have time on laser cutter.

Continue reading “Laser Cut Arc Reactor Replica” →

Sensor Gloves From Joystick Pots

August 20, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

joy

After working on the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge this summer, visions of a Heinlenesque robotic actuator filled [Hunter]’s head. His lab had access to something called a Cyberglove that used flexible pots in each of the fingers, but each of these gloves cost the lab $15,000 each.

With a little help from some joystick potentiometers, [Hunter] whipped up a decent approximation of a $15,000 device that measures how much a user’s fingers are bent. The pots are tied into an Arduino and read with analogRead(), while a small Python script interprets the data for whatever application [Hunter] can imagine.

There are a few drawbacks to [Hunter]’s design – it’s not wireless, unlike the $15,000 version, and they certainly don’t look as cool as the real thing. Then again, the DIY version only cost 0.2% as much as the real deal, so we’ll let any apparent problems slide for now.

Wrist-mounted Flamethrower On The Cheap

August 18, 2013 by Marsh 18 Comments

flamethrowerGlove

Everyone wants to be Iron Man these days, but without a spare arc reactor lying around, you’ll have to settle on building a backup suit component. [Xavier] documents his take on the wrist-mounted flamethrower in this dirt-cheap and unquestionably dangerous build. Cobbled together from parts found at a local hardware store, this glove has the typical “ready” setting with a small flame that, upon turning one’s wrist, erupts into a loud and large swath of flames. We suspect the mask worn in the video below doubles as identity protection and to prevent accidental hair conflagrations. Skip to the end for a demonstration.

Though not the first flamethrower build at Hackaday, [Xavier’s] is the only one with a guide and is certainly the cheapest. Be sure to look into the second generation of the Prometheus flame thrower and its subsequent third version that we featured a couple of years back. Not everyone’s flamethrower is wrist-mounted; some people put them inside a trombone. Remember, don’t try this at home.

Continue reading “Wrist-mounted Flamethrower On The Cheap” →

Electronic Wedding Attire For A Geeky Wedding

August 16, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 15 Comments

In the past we featured many projects that were used at [Bill] and [Mara]’s wedding. However we forgot the most important thing: their electronically enhanced clothes.

As you can see from the picture above, the wife opted for LEDs while the husband preferred Electro Luminescent (EL) wires/panels. The ATtiny based platform LilyTiny was picked to control all the LEDs, and charlieplexing was implemented as only 4 IO pins were available. Animations were made using Vixen and exported via a python script.

To power the EL wires, [Bill] hacked a Sparkfun EL battery pack/inverter. He removed the shell and took out the inverter part, reverse engineered the design enough to figure out how to bypass the onboard microcontroller that generated the on/off/blink function. Finally, he 3D printed enclosures to pack the electronics with one Li-Ion battery pack. A boost regulator was used to supply the 12v required by the EL panel power supply.

Don’t forget to also check out their centerpieces and wedding invitations that we previously featured.

IMU Boards As Next-gen Motion Capture Suit?

August 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

This guy takes a drink and so does the virtual wooden mannequin. Well, its arm takes a drink because that’s all the researchers implemented during this summer project. But the demo really makes us think that suits full of IMU boards are the next generation of motion capture. Not because this is the first time we’ve seen it (the idea has been floating around for a couple of years) but because the sensor chips have gained incredible precision while dropping to bargain basement prices. We can pretty much thank the smartphone industry for that, right?

Check out the test subject’s wrist. That’s an elastic bandage which holds the board in place. There’s another one on this upper arm that is obscured by his shirt sleeve. The two of these are enough to provide accurate position feedback in order to make the virtual model move. In this case the sensor data is streamed to a computer over Bluetooth where a Processing script maps it to the virtual model. But we’ve seen similar 9-axis sensors in projects like this BeagleBone sensor cape. It makes us think it would be easy to have an embedded system like that on the back of a suit which collects data from sensor boards all over the test subject’s body.

Oh who are we kidding? [James Cameron’s] probably already been using this for years.

Continue reading “IMU Boards As Next-gen Motion Capture Suit?” →