Daft Punk Helmet

Ever since Daft Punk came out with their brilliant robot-helmets, adorned with intricate LED displays, I knew I wanted to build one. I chose Thomas Bangalter's helmet - the chrome one. Putting in hours between my classes and homework during undergrad at UC Berkeley, I was able to complete the main display in time for Halloween, 2015.

The helmet itself was 3d printed in many parts out of PETG, using these models by bendiger. I reinforced the helmet with fiberglass. After a lot of surface finishing work, I painted it.

The main display consists of a 32X8 LED matrix, for a total of 256 LEDs. I designed a part to hold all the LEDs and had it laser cut out of PETG sheet. I also designed and 3D printed a couple jigs to aid in the assembly of the display. The whole display is broken down into four 8X8 subpanels. Maxim MAX7219 LED driver chips were used to drive each subpanel. An Arduino Micro runs the show. I programmed multiple animations, and in order to control them untethered, I created a simple Android app with the MIT App Inventor that communicates with the Arduino over Bluetooth using an HC-06 module. This makes it easy to switch between animations, as well as send custom messages to be displayed. The whole thing is powered by an 8.4V remote control car battery, which is regulated down to 5V.