Vivian’s TV Head Costume #CircuitPlaygroundExpress #Wearables
Vivian got an old broken CRT monitor from a college’s recycling cage and turned it into a helmet with a working RGB LED display. If you want to make a TV head without the electronics, this method should still work if you ignore all the electronic parts.
The screen is made of 300 individually-addressable RGB LEDs, specifically WS2812Bs (NeoPixels). I made the LED matrix from a single 5-meter, 60 LEDs/meter strip by cutting it into 15 strips of 20 pixels each and soldering them together. People often ask me how I can see through the helmet; the answer is that I designed the matrix to have empty space between the strips.
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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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