Robot Mask with Neopixel Eyes, iPhone Mouth, and Voice Changer #arduino
Mark Stevenson shared a guide for the Halloween project he created for his oldest son featuring NeoPixel Rings:
I made a robot costume for my son this year for Halloween. We used your neopixels and excellent tutorial for the eyes. It turned out great and everybody would stop him and ask him where he got the mask. I wrote up an instructable for the build that allows others to replicate the project. Thanks for the great products and support!
This year for Halloween we decided to make a robot mask for our oldest son. There are a few different electronic components that work together to make the final mask. We used neopixel rings and an arduino to control the eyes, an old iPhone worked as the mouth, and we took apart a cheap voice changer toy to add some more fun.
To make the box I used silver foam core board I found at Hobby Lobby. This is not the only way to do it though, as this added cost and complexity to the build that may not be necessary. You could easily use an existing cardboard box that you paint or cover with metallic tape. In any case, I will detail my process, but know that you may want to chose a different path….
NeoPixel Ring – 16 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers: Round and round and round they go! 16 ultra bright smart LED NeoPixels are arranged in a circle with 1.75″ (44.5mm) outer diameter. The rings are ‘chainable’ – connect the output pin of one to the input pin of another. Use only one microcontroller pin to control as many as you can chain together! Each LED is addressable as the driver chip is inside the LED. Each one has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external choke resistors are required making the design slim. Power the whole thing with 5VDC (4-7V works) and you’re ready to rock. (read more)
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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, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, 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.
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