Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build - FINAL p.20!

[ThreeFN]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

....just trust me on this, okay? Yes, I'll lose some visibility. You have to remember that these are 45º projection angle LEDs. They do not put out very much backlight, and they also do not put out much side illumination either. They will glow somewhat, but once the backsides are painted, this will eliminate a LOT of the backscattering light issue.

I've painted one as a test, illuminated it and looked at the backside and sides of the LED. Everyone seems to be seriously overestimating just how much light these things will project backwards and sideways.

Looking at the pictures... Your common rows haven't actually been soldered yet, have they?

Not to hammer the point too much but I'm just curious how they will 'side light' the plastic sub visor they're mounted in. I don't think it'll be much of a problem if any, I'm just curious. You could end up with this kinda cool fiber optic glow along the side tabs of the sub-visor that no one will ever be able to see :unsure

Like the vision though. It's like walking around with a perfectly spaced out hornets nest glued to your helmet.

Truly worst case you could borrow my solution of a small camera (pinhole probably) and a pair of video goggles.

 

[Grey]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I'm pretty sure that's more visibility than Thomas ever had in their old helmets. I wouldn't want to try reading a novel with that on but it'd be more than enough for walking around and interacting with people.

 

[Yodajammies]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

or wear while piloting an airplane

But how awesome would that be? Getting off the plane and the pilot comes out and just gives you a slight nod while "THANK YOU FOR FLYING WITH US TODAY" scrolls across the LED array. :lol

 

[SchweinHund227]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I is amazing the amount of work that goes in making a Prop like this !!!

No Punt intended.... MY HAT to you ! for pulling this off !!!
Can't wait to see the other one...

Sorry to post on an Older tread but.... those Helmets needs more exposure !!! they are so cool !

 

[Volpin]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Nope, rows aren't soldered yet. The pics are just testing alignment right now. I still have to clean off the flux and paint the backsides of all the LEDs first. I'll probably pre-solder the row leads as well before those sets are permanently mounted to the visor.

In doing some testing on the PET before I jumped into drilling the entire piece, I had some scraps I swiss-cheesed with the drill press to get an idea of how the material behaves (simultaneously revealing I needed to buy a new drill bit as mine was dull as hell.)

I've used those scraps to test things like gluing the LEDs in (2-part epoxy resin, applied to base of the LED with a toothpick works best) and how to best bend the leads. Right now I've got some spare LEDs glued in there - one green, one white and one orange. I've fired them up to see what the surrounding plastic does, and the overall result is "not much"

That might change when there's 300+ of these buggers firing off at once, but I think the illuminated element is too far above the plastic to really carry the light through the PET chassis.

I had considered the camera/goggles idea and might bend your ear on that if it comes to it later on in the future. The only issue is where I would mount the thing... The mouth of the helmet comes to mind, but I have a feeling that might be a bit narrow for the lens.

On that note, I researched TV glasses for a bit and the general consensus was that its like "looking at a 50" TV from about 6 feet away" - whats been your experience with yours so far? Decent substitute for actual vision?

 

[Agent RayBans]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

... or wear while piloting an airplane,

:lol

 

[Rabid Irish]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

For the LED's bleeding light into the surrounding PET plastic you could paint the inside edges of all your holes black to keep the light from bleeding. It would be a bit time extensive but perhaps worth the effort. Once all those "buggers" are lit up it could make quite a difference. Just my two cents

 

[Volpin]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

WHERE DO YOU FIND THESE?!?

Also, with every post you make showing these photos, I want more and more to make the ear LEDs as well....

 

[Agent RayBans]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

WHERE DO YOU FIND THESE?!?

Also, with every post you make showing these photos, I want more and more to make the ear LEDs as well....

I've just been collecting for a long time

On the ears... You could take some el-wire and glue it to the recesses of your current ears, then string the el-wire through some carefully drilled holes. They wouldn't be animated, but it would give the impression of the discovery ears. As far as making them multi colored, maybe if you used white el-wire and then covered with with gels or some sort of semi transparent paint... hm

The idea is pretty similar to how they lit the encore suits, except I would have the "pinch" of the ear ring on the bottom personally.

Just throwing around ideas!

 

[ThreeFN]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Nope, rows aren't soldered yet. The pics are just testing alignment right now. I still have to clean off the flux and paint the backsides of all the LEDs first. I'll probably pre-solder the row leads as well before those sets are permanently mounted to the visor.

In doing some testing on the PET before I jumped into drilling the entire piece, I had some scraps I swiss-cheesed with the drill press to get an idea of how the material behaves (simultaneously revealing I needed to buy a new drill bit as mine was dull as hell.)

I've used those scraps to test things like gluing the LEDs in (2-part epoxy resin, applied to base of the LED with a toothpick works best) and how to best bend the leads. Right now I've got some spare LEDs glued in there - one green, one white and one orange. I've fired them up to see what the surrounding plastic does, and the overall result is "not much"

That might change when there's 300+ of these buggers firing off at once, but I think the illuminated element is too far above the plastic to really carry the light through the PET chassis.

I had considered the camera/goggles idea and might bend your ear on that if it comes to it later on in the future. The only issue is where I would mount the thing... The mouth of the helmet comes to mind, but I have a feeling that might be a bit narrow for the lens.

On that note, I researched TV glasses for a bit and the general consensus was that its like "looking at a 50" TV from about 6 feet away" - whats been your experience with yours so far? Decent substitute for actual vision?

Yah, the mouth slot isn't much to work with. I'm using one of these right now, because it was cheap, available, small, and 640x480 resolution. I think you'd have to track down a pinhole camera. 2 seconds of googling found this page.

As far as goggles, I'll summarize my experience:

I started with a pair of myvu crystals because they are 640x480, same resolution as the camera and the highest I've ever found from the video goggles on the market. They were OK. They have two cabled from the 'control box' to the goggles themselves, one for each side. The apparent 'size' of the screen image wasn't stellar. They're a bit fiddly with wires, headphone cables, and the big signal cables coming out of everywhere.

ThreeFF (my partner in crime) went ahead and bought a pair of Vuzix Wrap 920's, which meant I had to get a pair for testing. That was a good decision on 3FF's part. They're far superior. They're still 640x480 resolution. You can detach the actual screen and prism unit from the plastic 'sunglasses' unit, which are unnecessarily huge. There's only one signal wire coming from the control box to the goggles. The headphones have their own little jacks so you can unplug then and leave them at home. It has a MUCH better screen size that is probably 50% larger than the myvu ones, at least subjectively. The control box normally runs on 2 AAs, but I tested and the board is '5V tolerant' so I should be able to just wire the control box into my existing power rails for the microcontrollers and it will work just fine. One less set of batteries to worry about. All around, it's perfect for my application.

Raybans, you bugger you...

You're design should be receptive to having lit ears with just some hole drilling and swapping them out, no?

 

[tekparasite]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

My approach was a bit different for mounting the LEDs, but I found that putting black foam works like a charm blocking 100% of the light.

The process is fast using a hole puncher.. just a thought

Thread here

 

[Volpin]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Hayes... I blame you for this.

Not the most beautiful and elegant board design (upper screenshot with the helmet shows an earlier, crappier version), but it'll work. I've got some fun ideas about getting this to look right in the ear. Should be interesting.

 

[tekparasite]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Hayes... I blame you for this.

Not the most beautiful and elegant board design, but it'll work. I've got some fun ideas about getting this to look right in the ear. Should be interesting.

:cry now you got me wanting lighted ears too, but it's too late for me.
I'll move forward with a non-lighted ear approach.

Btw, my visor LEDs are 5mm.

 

[Agent RayBans]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Hayes... I blame you for this.

:lol :thumbsup

Now, are you going for one ring of lights? Or two?

 

[KaanE]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I think he's replicating the helmet from the left?

 

[Agent RayBans]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I think he's replicating the helmet from the left?

Its kind of complicated... or at least I make it that way.

In the past few days its come to light that there were two verions of the Discovery helmets, IE the style of helmet Volpin is replicating, not just one like most people (well, me at least) assumed.

Basically, there is the one set of helmets we are all familiar with the full face LED displays:

And another set of lesser known helmets, that were actually used a lot. They have considerably less LEDs, thus giving Daft Punk better visibility:

Other than the LED displays the helmets are/were identical.




The reason this matters is that both Thomas helmets have different style ears.

The regular discovery ears have one ring of color:

And the lite-discovery helmets have two:

Personally I like how the two rings of color look better, but the one ring is more accurate to Volpin's build, as well as being easier to replicate.

Sorry for the overkill post, but at the very least I hope it was educational to all you helmet builders out there.

 

[KaanE]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I know (I've read your thread, thanks :thumbsup), that's why I said he was doing the (we're gonna call it) "Hero" helmet, with a lot of leds and with one ring in the ears.

 

[Volpin]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

I'll just be doing the one ring of color. I could say this is for the sake of accuracy, but if I'm honest here, I really have a mutt of a helmet. Non-smile full face LEDs with Electroma-style ears? Its really a pretty big mishmash.

I'll be doing the single color ring, mostly because I have a good idea of how to do it, and also because it will be much easier to build. Maybe a bit of a cop-out, but I do have some precedence to quote with the single-ring lights.

Here's a new thought though:

Does it seem to anyone else like the earliest of Discovery-era helmets had clear visors? At the very least, very very lightly tinted? There was a youtube video up (since been pulled down) done to Daft Punk's Something About Us where it shows off the LED functions in a dark room. In a lot of the shots, you can clearly see the LEDs, despite the lack of illumination. I'm guessing they had tinted subvisors to obscure their faces, then clear outer rigs to show off as much light as possible.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads here in deciding where to go. Should I tint the subvisor and paint the interior of the helmet black, leaving the outer visor clear to show off the illumination, or should I lightly tint the outside and rely on the lack of light to obscure vision inwards, despite cutting back on LED brightness?

 

[Agent RayBans]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

Here's a new thought though:

Does it seem to anyone else like the earliest of Discovery-era helmets had clear visors? At the very least, very very lightly tinted? There was a youtube video up (since been pulled down) done to Daft Punk's Something About Us where it shows off the LED functions in a dark room. In a lot of the shots, you can clearly see the LEDs, despite the lack of illumination. I'm guessing they had tinted subvisors to obscure their faces, then clear outer rigs to show off as much light as possible.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads here in deciding where to go. Should I tint the subvisor and paint the interior of the helmet black, leaving the outer visor clear to show off the illumination, or should I lightly tint the outside and rely on the lack of light to obscure vision inwards, despite cutting back on LED brightness?

Here is the Something About Us video if you want to study it further.

But yes, I agree with you about the visors. The earliest photos I have of Daft Punk in their discovery helmets the lights seem so bright and vivid I would think that if they were tinted its like you say, just barely so. In these photos you can clearly see all the LEDs, even the ones not lit up:

I'm not sure if you've ever watched it, but there is the half hour long french MTV special on Daft Punk that has a lot of interesting shots of their helmets. Including ones like this, where it looks like Thomas' helmet is on its last leg. I think the outer most visor has fallen off :wacko

I think at some point Daft Punk did start tinting the outer visors of their Discovery helmets, but it took its toll on the visibility of the LEDs.

To me it looks like the LEDs in the Hero Discovery helmets are so tightly packed that they didn't need to do anyhing like tint the subvisor, but like you say you probably would need to. Where as on the Lite-Versions of the Discovery helmets it looks like there is some sort of mesh in the open areas to block out light, while keeping the outer visor clear.



But anyway, for YOUR helmet I think the outer visor would look better mostly clear with maybe just a kiss of tint.

Maybe a pinch of some black or red RIT dye, so the unilluminated LEDs wouldn't show through as easily.

As much as you probably should tint the subvisor or do something like that to hide your face, you'll also want to leave it as clear as possible to give yourself the best vision as possible.

Maybe if you lightly tint the outer visor with RIT dye, and then lightly tint the sub visor the same way, that will do that trick.

 

[ThreeFN]

Re: Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter helmet build

There's one possibility that hasn't been discussed: they never had any vision though the helmets, so there was just a 'backing' that stopped people from seeing their faces, at all. In a similar train of though, they could have had 'eye slits' in that back that gave some some vision between a row of LEDs, and the rest of the backing handily obscured their faces.

I'm with Raybans on this, I think a touch of shadow to the outside visor is the way to go. I agree so much, I doing the same thing with mine (though that decision, on my part, was made long ago). I don't think it has to be hardly any tint at all, since the dark interior should 'subjectively' increase the tinting value (if that makes sense). I think back to that interior shot of your Guy visor which didn't look that dark, but looked piano black from the outside.

I also not going to recommend tinting your sub-visor, purely because if you don't like the results that's a lot of work down the tubes.

I'm planning to use one of these UA heatgear (for hot weather) hoods mostly as a neck cover (since I don't need to cover my face as much) but it could go a long way to increasing the helmet's interior 'black factor' and making you less visible.

I don't think it's a problem for all the wires and circuit boards to be viewable, these are robots afterall. I think the only concern should really be on hiding the fact that you're in it :rolleyes