Goggles

Nifty interactie goggles made pretty by Spetku, made smart by Krux.

anthropomorph-EYES

Anthropomorph-EYES Goggle Adaptor

Earlier this year I created a circuit board called the “anthropomorphEYES“! It’s a 12-segment display of LEDs that I’ve provided a special 3D printable lens for that once added to the front of the board, allows them to appear more expressive. The idea is that you can add this set of boards to any of your favorite household appliances and elevate them from thing, to friend! The .stl files for the lens is available on my GitHub, along with the eye code sketch. I’ve written a blog post all about how you can edit my code to create your own custom expressions, and animate them into more complex displays of emotionality! I’ve made these because I personally believe it’s an important human quality that we share our empathy with the inanimate objects that fill our lives! Over the summer I’ve take the design of the lens a step further and…

Goggles

Disco Bug Goggles

[JUST TO MAKE THIS CLEAR: I do not use any of adafruit’s LED products in my goggles. These and all others on Robotic Arts are original pieces of work… and their editors should learn to cite things better.] It’s been a little while since I’ve pushed out a pair of goggles. It seemed like a good time to do so with October being the anniversary of when I created my first set, the 3D light goggles. I didn’t do anything new and unusual with this set. In fact, my goal was to see how interesting I could get these to look without the use of a micro controller. I keep getting asked if I sell these things, and I am too stubborn and sentimental to part with any of the others I’ve made in the past. This is a low-cost, ‘all that glitters’ pair that simply blinks and has the…

Goggles

Theremin Goggles

Blinking, fading, and color changing lights are a standard for eye catching goggles. This being said, I decided to change it up a bit and make a set that would engage the wearer in the production of sound. As always I wanted my goggles to be interactive. When it comes to audio, I figured there was no better way to achieve this than with some sort of theremin which would invoke hand waving and finger wiggling from the wearer and anyone near by. Now, I realize that traditional theremins are quite complex in their inner workings and tend to run quite large, so I poked around the internet until I found this simplified optical theremin that requires a hand full of basic components and two 555 timers.This particular design also creates a very unique, annoying sound which in this application is perfect! Here is the link to the circuit I…

Goggles

Reactor Goggles

I was searching through DIY project ideas when I found an instructable on how to make an Arc Reactor from misc plastic pieces (Make an Iron Man Arc Reactor). The coiled wire and blue lights were so appealing to look at that I decided to give the new laser cutter down at the hackerspace a try and make a set of lenses that looked like mini ‘reactors’. My color scheme this time was going to be black and neon yellow (my favorite color) which I thought the blue LEDs would complement quite nicely…. It took no time to design the shapes for the lenses in illustrator and manifest the acrylic into two layers that once stacked, gave some depth to the radial design: In itself this looked pretty cool but I still needed to wrap magnet wire around the thin sections of the left most lens. I also needed to…

Goggles

Progress : Theremin Goggles

Two minutes of the most annoying sound I’ve ever made. =P I may stick with this circuit, however if possible I’d like to find another schematic that produces a different tone… in a deeper pitch. It would also be very nice if when my hands weren’t near the photo resistors the sound would just stop. Even I have a threshold for irritating.

Goggles

Othello Goggles

This weekend I was faced with many new challenges. I etched the first circuit I’ve ever designed in Eagle and with the help of my friends as well as Mark’s fancy tools, I also learned to surface mount all the tiny bits onto it! What you see above is the product of lots of patient help and fruitful collaboration. Thank you to Krux as always for developing the code and teaching me the various processes along the way. I am a better nerd than I was a week, or three weeks ago. This is indeed the brain of our first spawn; first of many. I will outline the production of the project now. Like the ‘3D Light’ goggles, I began with all the exterior embellishments, black and white mirrored motif in leather to complete the othello look…: With the leather pieces in place, I then soldered my RGB piranhas to…

Goggles

Othello Goggles : Switches and Things

I began my second set of goggles a couple of weeks ago and have since finished all the neat cosmetic parts on the exterior. Just like the name suggests, they are all in black and white, one eyepiece black with white trim, the other eyepiece its opposite. With the artsy part finished, this weekend I started on the electronic portion and wired up a breadboard with all my componants : three bat switches for each color channel of an RGB LED and a toggle button to switch between the LEDs housed in the two separate eyepieces. For this project I am using the ATTiny 2313 microcontroller, supplied to me by Krux. As I have never used anything other than the arduino, he isĀ also helping me yet again with the programming portion. This is a learning experience for both of us, so hopefully I can jump up the latter as quickly…

Goggles

Creative Dialogue : 3D Light Goggles

October is one of my favorite months and it has been quite a memorable one so far. I have taken a brief breather from developing my delta army and engaged in a playful dialogue with a fellow techie at our local Hacker space here in town. He has an impressive collection of self-made steam punk inspired goggles, of which he is currently underway with his fourth pair. In response to this stellar practice, I have created my own version… a retro leather-trimmed set that has some nifty chain-switch activated light pipe around the lenses to give the illusion of neon. Check out Krux’s hand-made goggles on his page : krux.org/gallery/mk2goggles I also want to thank him for helping me work past some brain farts along the way with this project. =] Alas, here is the outline: First I started by cutting and embellishing all the leather trimmings. The ‘V’ shaped…