Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter build help

I hope I put this in the appropriate location and if not I apologize. As the title says I'm working on a Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet and this is my first build that I've gotten this far with. Currently I've made it with card stock paper using pepakura, fiberglass resined it, added fiberglass cloth to make it more durable, and now I'm currently i the bondo stage of the project. I've already applied one coat and have sanded it down. Now I'm ready to apply a second coat to try and fill in the spots that are as I like to put it "dents" or "blemishes" in the helmet. The part I would like to ask for help with would be the LEDs in the visor.

Having never worked with electronics I've no idea where to go from here and would appreciate any help I could get. In the past I'll admit I've simply lurked through this forum, google, and 405th for the answers I sought, but at this point I'm truly stumped. I usually have a hard time asking for help, but now I'm on my last leg so I finally registered here to ask for help. From what I've seen people have used belt buckles and LED panels, but even in my lurking I haven't seen any sort of guide or anything of the sort detailing steps for the LEDs. So I guess to sum everything up I'd really not like to have this time and dedication gone to waste. Someone please help?:cry

If you're looking for something complex like what you would see in a Discovery helmet, you should check out Volpin's or Tekparasite's build. If you just want something flashing in there behind your tinted visor, buy some premade stuff on ebay (LED chasers and LED belt buckle strips) and glue em in there!

Good luck!

To be honest with this being my first build I'm pretty much fine with anything, but trying to steer clear of the belt buckles as long as I can since I've heard that its hard to see with it in there. As for anything else with LEDs I don't really know how to even get that started. If there's a link to a tutorial or something I can read giving me a general idea of how to work with LEDs I'd even give it a try myself lol.

It's going to be tough to see with anything in there. You HAVE to put something in front of your eyes for that to work.

My advice: Forget the electronics for now. Putting the cart so far ahead of the horse is a sure way to never finish. Work on each step as you come to it.

Right now you're at the smoothing and filling stage. Sand, fill, sand, prime, repeat until you have a glass smooth surface. Perfect that technique first, so at the very least you will have a helmet you can be proud of. THEN start worrying about the other parts: Molding, casting, tinting, electronics, padding, etc.

It's just very easy to get so caught up in the "idea" of the build and where it can go, that you forget that it's you who has to build it at the end of the day.

Best of luck to you...and post pictures so we can all offer some helpful guidance on your way.

-Nick

If you "know nothing about electronics" then multiplexing an LED matrix with a microcontroller and some shift registers(what volpin did) is probably a bit out of range for you. There's certainly plenty of info and tutorials out there on the internet if you really want to tackle it but it's a hell of a first project. You could do just a static set of LED "eyes" fairly easily, something along these lines:

http://th04.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2011/205/1/d/1d7573fc96b480ad9e2b207191f0be0b-d41issa.jpg

Alright I'll focus on the sanding for right now. Currently as stated above I have a layer of fiberglas cloth sanded down with a layer of bondo over that which is also sanded down. seeing as how there are dents and little crevices on the surface after the sanding I'm assuming I should apply another layer of bondo to fill those out. On my various searches through the internet I've also heard that when the dents are tiny you can use something called spot putty to fill them in. Is this true? Another thing I'm unsure about is wet sanding. I read somewhere on a blog that you can wet sand bondo to make it smoother. Should I do this or is it more of a personal preference? Oh and I'll post pictures as soon as I can, its just rather dark right now so they wouldn't come out that good haha

Wow. If I could do those eyes even that would be fine because that looks absolutely amazing.