colonelmasako
Active Member
Prepare for lots of pictures!
I'm finally getting around to organizing my pictures of this build in a thread. Special thanks to Tekparasite for his thread from which many of my ideas came from. Lots of lessons learned, mistakes made. Still a work in progress, but here goes!
The story: When I originally bought a Guy Manuel Tron Legacy bucket from a user on this forum, I anticipated putting a fully animated LED display in, after being inspired by Tekparasite. But I quickly realized the parts I bought wouldn't fit. Heres how my final helmet ended up looking, I stuck with just a static display.
But I had all these parts laying around, just collecting dust. Till my friend asked me to put them to use. He wanted to do Tron Punk Thomas, with a fully animated display. So I went to work for him.
Step 1: Test the Arduino mini board with the Sureelectronics 3mm LED display board.
In Tekparasites thread, some kind users posted a link to a code base for the Arduino written in C++ that takes care of all the animations for you. I verified the board as is works with the code, and then proceeded to creating the display basis.
Step 2: Cut the PETG, drill holes
Using 1/32" PETG material, I tried to copy Tekparasite's LED spacing sizing, so here I show the perfboard I marked up, alongside the lightblocking craft foam.
Here's me using my clamps and a dremel to drill out the LED pin holes.
The client was making his bucket at this time, so after drilling it, I moved onto preparing the Sureelectronics board and the Arduino.
Step 3: Prepare Arduino and Sureelectronics board.
Here's me unsoldering headers and attaching wires for the 5V supply to the LED driver board. I really beat up the Arduino, sad to say.
But not as bad as what I did to this board. First panel was removed by force and knife, and it was a BAD idea. Ripped up traces and everything.
But after studying it quite a bit, figured out how to fix it. This picture shows 3 of the 4 panels removed, and my rework wires and resistors for repair. And a test single white LED, to prove to myself the board can drive that color nice and bright.
Step 4: Receive client bucket, re-do drilling of PETG.
At around this time, I received the raw bucket from my client. Good looking, but thick as hell, and smaller than I thought. Here's a raw piece of PETG cut and fit inside it.
And heres how it compares in size to my previous drill job.
The red line indicates the size of the opening of his visor. So I had to re-drill it, so I used the new piece with the previous piece on top, to create the precise spacing I needed. Reducing the size to 4x32, instead of 8x32. Which is funny, because it became more screen accurate this way, for Tron Punk.
Unfortunately, this was not as clean as last time, and it got more scratched up than I like. But it fit well.
Step 5: Start mounting LEDs
Heres the PETG after drilling, and after doing my best to mold the stuff to the right shape of his helmet. Dipped it in boiling water and bent it as best I could, but this was hard. I wish I had a vacuum former for this
Once this was shaped, started cutting off the leads of the LEDs down to about a centimeter long, and gluing them to the PETG, with the light blocker on the side of the user. First row went fine, using superglue.
Making progress, but then realized something.
Damn superglue is nasty stuff, and started staining the PETG a white gassy color, fogging it up. And the stuff doesn't clean off. So this many LEDs didn't work out perfectly, a bit foggy, grr :angry
But you can still see through it decently.
Decided to quit using superglue, and tried E9001. Awesome stuff I used to mount my visor before, and if applied carefully using a toothpick, did the job just fine. Glued in the 1x8 headers from Pololu too, to keep them stable.
Now why did I do it this way, rather than use perfboard, like Tekparasite did? Because Julio knows black magic I don't. How he cut his perfboard so cleanly, I'll never know. I did what works for me.
Step 6: Solder, and solder, and re-solder, and pull my hair out!!!
This part was frustrating. Because I did it wrong the first time.
Heres where I started. Used 30AWG wire from Radio Shack and lap joint soldering techniques, with lead-free solder.
This is how the first run looked when done.
Testing afterword proved disastrous. Cold solder joints and shorts everywhere. I failed. Then I decided to be careful about things, and did soldering correctly. Using better wire, lead solder (which is so hard to get, but so much better since it melts at lower temperatures), and wrapping each solder joint.
The final result took almost 4 hours per 4x8 chunk, but the result is bulletproof. And you can still see through it no problem.
Step 7: Create cable wiring harness
This was a painful step. The first part was to create a test cable, shorter than the final ones. Removed the final panel from the LED board, and prepared to create cables.
This first one proved very painful to make. But it works. The wiring decoding I'll detail later.
First test of cabling showed good results. But there was another problem with the way I soldered it up.
I reversed the rows and columns. The rows in my matrix are the (-) connections. And the columns are (+). But magically, the code base compensates for this, and works equally well for the 8x32 and 32x8 cases. So got lucky here. I did find I had to reverse the connector on the (+) connections to get the animations to flow correctly. But in this case, I could only test one 4x8 chunk, so I had to create the rest of the cables.
Another deviation from Tekparasites work: the LED board will not fit in the helmet. So I had to create really long cables. Found this awesome ribbon cable to do the job.
Soldered female pins and crimped them onto the wire. This cable is tiny. Heres one all finished up, tested and reinforced.
And heres the total cable set. This took WAY too long.
And a victorious test of all this hard work. Also one of the animations.
Step 8: Mount the display in the final bucket
Clients bucket then arrived, all painted up and visor mounted. A thing of beauty. Had to put it next to mine (mines the Guy Manuel one).
Did a quick test fit of the final display in the helmet, and put it on, to make sure it doesn't interfere with the users head.
Then I wired up this test fitting, to see how well it worked in the bucket. Sexy looking if I do say myself.
Then got to really mounting this in there. Client wanted it removable, so got some #6-32 1/2" screws to glue in there. Theory was to glue them in backwards, and use bolts to hold in display. Here's after I drilled in holes and screws mounted.
This part sucked. Getting the display to line up nice and straight, while letting the very strong but hard to set E9001 glue do the work.
Took a few hours to get one side stable enough to mount other side. This shows both sides glued and pretty stable.
Then the fun part: mount cables. Used nice cable ties like Tekparasite did. Reinforced the cable set using hot glue at the base, to make sure if the cable is pulled, it doesn't yank out the display.
And the final test: wear it while on. I can see pretty well through the LED display while all on, when the lights are on. When lights are off, almost impossible.
Test conclusion: its freaking hot in there. So I ordered some fans that I'll install when they come in.
Lots of work to go here. Have to create the control box, solder up the Arduino some more, and do some code scaling to make the animations work with 4x32 vs. 8x32. Its been fun so far, what can go wrong? :rolleyes
I'm finally getting around to organizing my pictures of this build in a thread. Special thanks to Tekparasite for his thread from which many of my ideas came from. Lots of lessons learned, mistakes made. Still a work in progress, but here goes!
The story: When I originally bought a Guy Manuel Tron Legacy bucket from a user on this forum, I anticipated putting a fully animated LED display in, after being inspired by Tekparasite. But I quickly realized the parts I bought wouldn't fit. Heres how my final helmet ended up looking, I stuck with just a static display.
But I had all these parts laying around, just collecting dust. Till my friend asked me to put them to use. He wanted to do Tron Punk Thomas, with a fully animated display. So I went to work for him.
Step 1: Test the Arduino mini board with the Sureelectronics 3mm LED display board.
In Tekparasites thread, some kind users posted a link to a code base for the Arduino written in C++ that takes care of all the animations for you. I verified the board as is works with the code, and then proceeded to creating the display basis.
Step 2: Cut the PETG, drill holes
Using 1/32" PETG material, I tried to copy Tekparasite's LED spacing sizing, so here I show the perfboard I marked up, alongside the lightblocking craft foam.
Here's me using my clamps and a dremel to drill out the LED pin holes.
The client was making his bucket at this time, so after drilling it, I moved onto preparing the Sureelectronics board and the Arduino.
Step 3: Prepare Arduino and Sureelectronics board.
Here's me unsoldering headers and attaching wires for the 5V supply to the LED driver board. I really beat up the Arduino, sad to say.
But not as bad as what I did to this board. First panel was removed by force and knife, and it was a BAD idea. Ripped up traces and everything.
But after studying it quite a bit, figured out how to fix it. This picture shows 3 of the 4 panels removed, and my rework wires and resistors for repair. And a test single white LED, to prove to myself the board can drive that color nice and bright.
Step 4: Receive client bucket, re-do drilling of PETG.
At around this time, I received the raw bucket from my client. Good looking, but thick as hell, and smaller than I thought. Here's a raw piece of PETG cut and fit inside it.
And heres how it compares in size to my previous drill job.
The red line indicates the size of the opening of his visor. So I had to re-drill it, so I used the new piece with the previous piece on top, to create the precise spacing I needed. Reducing the size to 4x32, instead of 8x32. Which is funny, because it became more screen accurate this way, for Tron Punk.
Unfortunately, this was not as clean as last time, and it got more scratched up than I like. But it fit well.
Step 5: Start mounting LEDs
Heres the PETG after drilling, and after doing my best to mold the stuff to the right shape of his helmet. Dipped it in boiling water and bent it as best I could, but this was hard. I wish I had a vacuum former for this
Once this was shaped, started cutting off the leads of the LEDs down to about a centimeter long, and gluing them to the PETG, with the light blocker on the side of the user. First row went fine, using superglue.
Making progress, but then realized something.
Damn superglue is nasty stuff, and started staining the PETG a white gassy color, fogging it up. And the stuff doesn't clean off. So this many LEDs didn't work out perfectly, a bit foggy, grr :angry
But you can still see through it decently.
Decided to quit using superglue, and tried E9001. Awesome stuff I used to mount my visor before, and if applied carefully using a toothpick, did the job just fine. Glued in the 1x8 headers from Pololu too, to keep them stable.
Now why did I do it this way, rather than use perfboard, like Tekparasite did? Because Julio knows black magic I don't. How he cut his perfboard so cleanly, I'll never know. I did what works for me.
Step 6: Solder, and solder, and re-solder, and pull my hair out!!!
This part was frustrating. Because I did it wrong the first time.
Heres where I started. Used 30AWG wire from Radio Shack and lap joint soldering techniques, with lead-free solder.
This is how the first run looked when done.
Testing afterword proved disastrous. Cold solder joints and shorts everywhere. I failed. Then I decided to be careful about things, and did soldering correctly. Using better wire, lead solder (which is so hard to get, but so much better since it melts at lower temperatures), and wrapping each solder joint.
The final result took almost 4 hours per 4x8 chunk, but the result is bulletproof. And you can still see through it no problem.
Step 7: Create cable wiring harness
This was a painful step. The first part was to create a test cable, shorter than the final ones. Removed the final panel from the LED board, and prepared to create cables.
This first one proved very painful to make. But it works. The wiring decoding I'll detail later.
First test of cabling showed good results. But there was another problem with the way I soldered it up.
I reversed the rows and columns. The rows in my matrix are the (-) connections. And the columns are (+). But magically, the code base compensates for this, and works equally well for the 8x32 and 32x8 cases. So got lucky here. I did find I had to reverse the connector on the (+) connections to get the animations to flow correctly. But in this case, I could only test one 4x8 chunk, so I had to create the rest of the cables.
Another deviation from Tekparasites work: the LED board will not fit in the helmet. So I had to create really long cables. Found this awesome ribbon cable to do the job.
Soldered female pins and crimped them onto the wire. This cable is tiny. Heres one all finished up, tested and reinforced.
And heres the total cable set. This took WAY too long.
And a victorious test of all this hard work. Also one of the animations.
Step 8: Mount the display in the final bucket
Clients bucket then arrived, all painted up and visor mounted. A thing of beauty. Had to put it next to mine (mines the Guy Manuel one).
Did a quick test fit of the final display in the helmet, and put it on, to make sure it doesn't interfere with the users head.
Then I wired up this test fitting, to see how well it worked in the bucket. Sexy looking if I do say myself.
Then got to really mounting this in there. Client wanted it removable, so got some #6-32 1/2" screws to glue in there. Theory was to glue them in backwards, and use bolts to hold in display. Here's after I drilled in holes and screws mounted.
This part sucked. Getting the display to line up nice and straight, while letting the very strong but hard to set E9001 glue do the work.
Took a few hours to get one side stable enough to mount other side. This shows both sides glued and pretty stable.
Then the fun part: mount cables. Used nice cable ties like Tekparasite did. Reinforced the cable set using hot glue at the base, to make sure if the cable is pulled, it doesn't yank out the display.
And the final test: wear it while on. I can see pretty well through the LED display while all on, when the lights are on. When lights are off, almost impossible.
Test conclusion: its freaking hot in there. So I ordered some fans that I'll install when they come in.
Lots of work to go here. Have to create the control box, solder up the Arduino some more, and do some code scaling to make the animations work with 4x32 vs. 8x32. Its been fun so far, what can go wrong? :rolleyes
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