hey robot fans welcome back to the build today we were gonna do all the
electronics for the helmet it's gonna be a long one but fun will be had secrets
will be revealed so let's get started okay first up we have the rom FX module
from John May this will give me an amplified voice along with some pretty
cool voice effects out of the box it looks like this you have the rom FX
board a speaker a microphone and a power supply now I don't think were going to
be using this power supply right now I'm using a dedicated DC power supply and in
the helmet it'll have its own set of batteries so we can just get rid of this
for now now the kit comes with this speaker if we test it out thing you can
hear it's very loud but that's also because it's pretty big I don't think
I'm gonna be able to fit this in the helmet the way I want to what a lot of
builders do is they'll put it in their chest plate and then run a wire from
their head down to their chest I don't want to do that in any way I want to
keep this helmet 100% self-contained so I don't think we're gonna be able to use
these speakers instead we're going to be using these much smaller five watt 8 ohm
speakers wired in parallel they fit really nicely behind the hollow please
be made back in part four I printed a little enclosure for them which gives
the front a little more surface area to glue down to the helmet and also gives
me the opportunity to insulate the sound a little bit with some foam I print
through this little mic stand here this holds the mic in the desired
configuration while giving me a flat surface to put some velcro tape on to
velcro tape will be the main method of sticking everything inside of the helmet
due to its non permanent strength feedback is a bit of a concern with this
system if any of the sound from the speaker's makes its way back into the
microphone well that won't be good that's that's stuck in one - okay look
that's good if there's no feedback happening right now and if it's not
feeding back late now it's probably not gonna feedback because there's only
gonna be more carving and more stuff inside the
helmet you'll avoid all the form so it's okay right now with all this bouncing
around we should be good those books that's not feedback that's actually the
wrong effects every time I stop talking give me a static but now I also want to
be able to hear what's going on around me while I'm wearing my helmet but I
don't want any clankers sneaking up on me so I'm going to install an external
amplified relay system or simply ears remember all my secret holes from part 5
well those are the house the cornerstone of the ears system these little
microphones they are really tiny and they just so happen to fit right into
that little recess under the ear I paid extra special attention to this area
during the weathering process so that I can get it as dark as possible so the
microphones would be as invisible as they can possibly be these mics will
replace the slightly larger electret microphone on this prefab amplifier
board and the whole thing will glue onto the inside of the helmet with a
microphone pointing through the hole for the speaker we will be using these very
tiny very thin 2 watt 8 ohm speakers I printed a little housing for them with a
mesh glued on top essentially turning them into a headphone this will be
housed inside of a piece of padding from the helmet padding kit we'll be seeing
more of later I put the connections from the amplifier to the speaker on these
little DuPont connectors so I can still detach the ear as necessary for
maintenance these last two ports connect to 5 volts
and ground which will give us a full mono sound system on each ear from what
I hear cooling fans are crucial to the trooping game so I'm going to install
these two thin line blower style fans just above my forehead
they are 12 volt DC fans and an interest of saving some power and adding a little
extra comfort I'm wiring these fans up to a transistor so I can use an Arduino
to give them some speed control or just turn them off completely if I want to
these are velcro it into place with some extra slack in the wiring so I can find
that sweet spot for optimal cooling and D fogging speaking of their do we you
know it's also going to be controlling our lighting systems one of my favorite
sci-fi tropes is the interior helmet lights that serve no purpose and
slightly blind the character but we could see the actors pretty face we paid
millions of dollars to get Matt Damon in this movie and dammit we're gonna see
his face well yeah I want that in my helmet too so I'm going to install
to neopixels on each one of the cheeks and since they are individually
programmed neopixels I can have a lot of fun with this lighting it'll probably
only be on 1% of the time if ever but that 1% of the time is gonna be pretty
cool now all these electronics are going to
need some power so let's talk batteries after trying out a few different types
of batteries and weighing safety concerns with battery sizes and
capacities I decided to use these nickel metal hydride packs these little 6 volt
battery packs are essentially 5 double-a batteries wired in series I'm going to
wire 2 pairs of these in series to give me 12 volts and then why are those 2
pairs into parallel to combine the lifespan of the two packs finally i've
velcroed the packs into place on top of the helmet and sat back to admire all of
my wonderful electronics and oh boy piece Mealing all this together has made
things a bit messy in the back of the helmet here it still fits and everything
is connected properly but yeah I can't leave it like this there is no way these
wires aren't going to get pulled out or sweat on or whatever through the life of
the helmet so I think that everything is now in place and I have a firm idea of
what's going where I need to consolidate a lot of this onto some proper circuit
boards luckily I have a few of these proto boards on hand these are different
than the ones I usually use in that there are defined strips on the back
which can be used to create power buses this will eliminate the need for those
walnuts and a lot of the wiring here's my sketch of the proto boards before I
start wiring it looks super complicated but it's really not the wiring is super
tight and tricky but these two boards will literally replace everything in
this mess I decided to color the board black so when all said and done it'd be
hidden a little nicer on the back of the helmet wiring everything up was a breeze
and before I put them back in the helmet I can give you a rundown of how this all
works power is going to come in from the batteries to this toggle switch here
this will be the main hardware switch for the entire helmet from there goes to
this buck converter I have 12 volts coming in and this board
will step that down to 9 volts and charge this whole rail with a nine volts
these nine volts will power the romm effects voice module and output over to
the arduino on the other board up top I have a rail dedicated to the ears
systems they are going to be controlled directly by the Arduino pin outs and
we'll use this bus to transfer power over to the other side of the helmet
and this sport also handles my transistors for the ROM affects voice
module and the fans the transistor is basically a switch controlled by a small
current the transistor breaks the power circuit to the fans on the ground side
and only after receiving a small current from the Arduino will it complete the
circuit this gives me an on and off switch for the ROM effects and the fans
controlled by the Arduino I can also use this for speed control on the fans using
a PWM signal I can quickly turn the fans on and off about 50 times per second and
if over any given second the fan is on for 50 percent of the time that would
translate to about 50 percent output from the fan this will essentially give
me an off low and high setting for the fans from this board a few data cables
for the ROM effects and fans a nine volt and ground wire transfer over to the
second board through this five volt step-down which will then power this
five volt rail the nine volts from the first board will power the Arduino
through the VIN pin and the 5 volt step-down will power our lights and
communication finally we have all of our dwee now pin outs here which will go to
each component in the helmet and all of this is communicated through this
Bluetooth module inside the helmet I also printed a cover for that back panel
with lines much straighter than my dremel cuts back in video 3 I was hoping
to attach some out blowing fans here but with the fans on top of this grill my
head no longer fits inside so it'll just be the cover so this is the part of the
video where I get to do one of those makeover show style reveals so with a
flourish we can reveal our new back of the helmet setup
yes this is much better on every single level there is less wires less mass the
voltage readings are better throughout the whole system and even better yet I
can cover most of these boards with some felt tape since heat isn't really an
issue except for on the Arduino and the buck converters and that will only make
these even more hidden and more cohesive inside of the helmet now I keep talking
about Arduino is controlling things and adjusting fan speeds so how am I gonna
do that when the helmet is on my head well each clone is fitted with his own
comm pad on his right forearm usually this piece is just agreeing it has no
real function but I plan on using mine as a keyboard to input commands to the
Arduino in the helmet the comm pad itself will be built in a future episode
but for now I've built this super sexy temporary breadboard version it has an
Arduino Nano which is very small but in the actual forearm I'm going to use the
even smaller Arduino Pro Mini I have six buttons set up here for now and all this
runs through the Bluetooth which sends the commands to the Arduino in the
helmet okay we're ready to test this out we have our comm pad here with the
Bluetooth module if we were to look inside the helmet right now you would
see that the Arduino is on and the Bluetooth module is blinking very
quickly that means it is looking for its partner which is sitting right here on
the comm pad when we plugged power into the comm pad we will see this LED come
on when the Bluetooth modules are paired so we're waiting for this light here ok
now that the light is on we know that the two items are paired and we can
start sending communication from this Arduino to the Arduino in the head so we
could start with the ROM effects since we can hear that right away if I press
the wrong effects button we hear the wrong effects come on inside the helmet
can also test out the lights we hit the helmet light button we should see those
blue lights come on very good I also set up a disco button this is going to be my
special lighting effect for right now all I could think to do was add some
crazy seizure inducing disco lights so those will flash like that that should
be a lot of fun to wear and lastly we can test out the fans I'm not sure if
you can hear this so I will put my microphone inside the helmet and now if
I press the fan button
you
and yeah so this works I couldn't think of any reasonable way to show you how
the ear system works so you'll just have to take my word for it now let's finally
get this helmet fitting on my head properly I bought this helmet padding
system from Amazon along with the rest of my velcro taped pieces I
strategically placed these pads all around the helmet so the fit is snug and
my eyes are properly aligned with the visor and as it's becoming tradition in
these videos the absolute last step is to reinstall my macro binoculars put
those ear Greeley's back on and get ready to wear my fully self-contained
you left your clone trooper helmet for the first time it's cool all right
that's gonna do it for this video thanks for tuning in I think I got everything
more than nobody wanted to hear let me turn on my helmet light so you can see
me a little better I'm very happy to say that we are finally going to be moving
on to the armor the first video of that is going to be the arms which will lead
into the compound which controls the helmet of course if you like these
videos please take the time to subscribe check out some of my other projects as
always we're going to finish its progression shot so I will see you next
time
Disko