Tips and Tricks for making the Helmets

[Beastman]

WOW 3FN!! That is nothing less than AMAZING! EQ graphs are my fave.
I'm glad to see something unique and impressive like this on the forum.Well done man.

[ThreeFN]

That's gonna look so bad ass...

Gawd its amazing!

I'm in awe, as usual.

That is quite impressive

Thanks. It's always nice to get feedback like that. I can't really say that the comments keep me going (I blame that on my slight insanity, of course ) but they do help keep me motivated. Splitting hairs really.

Why do I even try to make helmets? WE ARE NOT WORTHY, WE ARE NOT WORTHY!

Come now, if anything, I'm proof that you can learn any skill if your driven (or bat s**t crazy) enough. I had almost no microcontroller experience when I started, and now here I am writing my own libraries and working with protothreads.

Speaking of which, I've parsed up the EQ code into a library. And in the process, I found a bug or two (related to using storage variables that were too small). I've also added a few 'mode' features to change it's behavior (mostly how much averaging is done to make the EQ less 'spazzy').

If anything, I hope this inspires. I mean, I've made a half way decent attempt at the whole 'walking electronics show' with 'iron man' aspects of a heads up display, 'hidden' controls (no keypad), etc. Granted, I've had these ideas and been working on this for 5.5 years (god that number sounds huge), but no one has come along and beat me to it yet.

WOW 3FN!! That is nothing less than AMAZING! EQ graphs are my fave.
I'm glad to see something new and expressive like this on the forum.Well done man.

New? I hate to say it but I've been posting my progress since 2009

FYI - sound is an absolute bugger to work with. It's probably been one of the most annoying and finicky sources of 'content' for the display. For instance, I have to get source volume just right otherwise the EQ gets 'blown out' or doesn't register enough. I've got some auto-gain-like functionality in my code to try and mitigate this but the EQ chips have rather larger frequency bands so they can over-saturate quite easily with 'normal' music that has a number of instruments. With pure tones they work great, music not as well And the FFT work that I did ages ago was just a farse and a half in comparison. I think random noise looked more legit that that stuff.

[Beastman]

Sorry;I'm aware of your WIP.I meant to say unique and impressive,sometimes iPhones like to spell whatever they want.

[PedroAloha]

Man that is sick, love those EQ's especially....am standing giving a round of applause

[ThreeFN]

Sorry;I'm aware of your WIP.I meant to say unique and impressive,sometimes iPhones like to spell whatever they want.

No need to be sorry mate. I take the mickey quite a lot

Man that is sick, love those EQ's especially....am standing giving a round of applause

The EQs are good fun. I will admit, the one problem with the cheek EQ is what happens when you don't send sound to them. My auto-gain functionality tends to start amplifying the noise when there is no sound, so the animation looks like 'on/off' noise with the bars banging between zero and full. I'm probably going to write some other animations for the cheeks, I just haven't figured out how it switches between showing the EQ and not.

That's further complicated by the fact that I want to send live (microphone) sound to those EQ's as well. I'm not sure I'm going to get enough volume or consistent volume to make the EQ chips happy. Anyone who's ever tried to normalize their music collection is probably aware of what I'm talking about.

The pursuit of insanity...

[zer0g]

ThreeFN, that's nothing short of spectacular! Great job on it so far.

[ThreeFN]

ThreeFN, that's nothing short of spectacular! Great job on it so far.

Cheers mate.

I will admit, I'm not sure what the next update will involve. I do have some electret microphones and an analog muxer (multi-in, single out signal selector chip) I could play with to see how they pick up ambient sound.

I think for right now I'm going to rebuild the 1-wire temperature sensor library. Right now it has these lovely huge 'wait' periods in it that are about a second long. I need to remove those since they'll kill the timing of the other threads.

[ctwalrus]

well any progress in getting rid of those wait periods?
what about the camera so you can see?

[Mr. Hoosteen]

when u r done, i want u to remake their alternate discovery helmets music video for something about us

[ThreeFN]

well any progress in getting rid of those wait periods?
what about the camera so you can see?

I have. But I haven't coded a test thread or a new climate control class yet.

I have been updating my HUD library a bit. I've modified my 'battery bar' code to now give me bar graphs of definable size. These might come in handy as 'faders' and the like. It's one of those bits of code that you may not see a direct use for now, but it certainly extends the capability into the future, especially if other end up using my code.

when u r done, i want u to remake their alternate discovery helmets music video for something about us

One of many daydreams I've had about the project, trust me.

So one of the new ideas that I've had rolling around in my head are these:







they're cufflinks. I'm considering putting these up on Shapeways. I still have some modifications to make and a few measurements to double check, but I think I've demonstrated the concept.

A little pocket money from the proceeds wouldn't go amiss right now, and it might help me cover the bills on this project a bit easier.

Piqued anyone's interest? I'm considering other items to put into a shapeways store as well. The cost has become much, much more reasonable in recent history which is part of the reason I'm reconsidering this idea. I went through the concept probably a year or more ago, but I thought the costs were too prohibitive to interest most people.