Following on from my Helmet Build project, here I'll cover the electronics for the Discovery Era version of my Thomas Helmet!

 

The electronics you see here are all designed and assembled by yours truely. This has been the most costly part of the build, I believe. After reaching a total that I will not divulge (it's high.....), I stopped tallying costs. In this project there are: 420+ LEDs, 5 sets of PCBs (printed circuit boards) and a whole lot of man hours.

 

I designed the motherboard for the electronics to accomodate an ATMEGA32A PU which in turn runs 12 PCBs with a MAX7219 chip on them. Alongside these 12 PCBs which run the 420+ LEDs for the readout (11x42 matrix) there are 2 sideboard PCBs, which hold 2 VU Meters and 4 Bicolour LEDS each, and also 2 rainbow chaser boards. 

The programming for the motherboard ATMEGA chip has been completely programmed by me (still in development), with help from other builders who have programmed their helmets with Arduino's (which is also built on an ATMEGA chip).

 

Here's some of the progress shots, although a lot of this is computer based, and I don't have any screenshots, I'm sorry!

These lasercut files, which I created from my friend brunoosti's designs are designed to be the "sub-visor" - the frame for the LEDs which will sit inside the visor area of the helmet! Incredible what you can create on the laser cutter!

 

Based on the same idea as the fun sunglasses you get from the $2 shops, or the designs/images on the back of vehicles, with tiny holes in the images, the space between the LEDs in the frame will allow some pretty good visibility from the inside with a helmet on. Without a helmet it's a bit hard to see, but in the dark in a light space increases visibility.

The 420+ red 2mm LEDs are cut down to size and soldered into a single line of 8 LEDs. This process is repeated another 8 times, with all LEDs soldered across the colums for each row to create an 8x8 matrix. This process is repeated until there are 5 8x8 matrices, a 2x8, 5 8x3's and a 2x3 matrix.

A bad shot of the visiblity. When cleaned, this is kinda what the LEDs would look like in front of the eyes.

Following are some shots of the other LEDs in the sub-visor. Here I am testing them on a breadboard, some protoboard, freestanding wiring and my custom made PCBs.

I also built the container for the rainbow chaser, as I call it.