Just in time to counter my sadness at how few custom electronics projects I saw at New York Comic Con, here are Cassy Michel’s instructions for a great LED Headdress project. She encourages it for alertness — but taking a look at her friend modeling it in the photo above, I see it as the perfect way to light up your Halloween-ed self in a dark room. Either way, more LED blinkies = everyone wins.
And bonus points — this is a project from one of Becky’s students at SVA’s Products of Design program!
One of the assignments in my class was to redesign a piece of trash. I decided a to redesign an iced coffee cup. After designing many edible cups I became really interested in energy and how individuals maintain energy. One of my ideas was to create a device that would encourage power naps over drinking caffeine. In doing research about sleep I discovered that the best way to wake up from sleep is through light.
This LED headdress is a prototype of what essentially is an alarm clock. The two lights would fade on when the user was ready to wake up. This is why the lights are so close to the eyes. In the end, I believe the object works better as a piece of jewelry. I would like to re-design this with one light in the center of the ring.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
