Carlos Flores, a 10th-grade student, created a replica of a helmet worn by the electronic music duo Daft Punk. The front of this silver chrome helmet has a full LED matrix display that illuminates words and patterns. To shape the helmet, Carlos used a baseball helmet and cardboard. He added fiberglass and Bondo to give it structural integrity, and he smoothed it down to paint it.
Inside, the electronics include an 8x32 LED matrix array with LED drivers. An MSP430 LaunchPad controls the sequence of LED patterns. Carlos got help from his dad, Luis, to cycle through a lot of patterns and words and figure out what looked best.
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I agree. It's amazing what kids are doing with electronics today. The MSP430 Launchpad is definitely a cool prototyping platform like the Arduino to build smart electronic gadgets. Awesome project!
Good to know that there are some other people that do this in high school. Really great project too, I like the use of auto body filler to cover the helmet, as well as the use of cheap and avaliable materials like carboard instead of something expensive like cnc cut or 3-d printed parts. Nice job!
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
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