Expression

This page documents building an emoting face display for your visor. very WIP

Display

LED Matrices

The classic. This is what we use. You can get a shocking amount of emotion out of 8x8 red pixels. these come in other colours as well and you can even put coloured filters in front of them.

LCD/Oled display

Oled displays look a lot better because they dont leave an outline of the backlight across the whole thing.

Driving the display

You'll need a microcontroller to tell the display what to show. There are many options for this. the classic one is an Arduino, but we personally use an ESP32. its programmed the same way but has built in wifi/bluetooth and a bunch of other goodies that make it useful for controlling externally.

The Code

We have written some code for playing 8x8 led matrix animations. its written for the esp32 but should run on an arduino too. We will upload the code and write a guide for flashing it and wiring and stuff at some point. if you want this and are waiting. poke us and we will get on it - the collective

We also have TEMSAM: a web-based sprite and animation design and sequencing tool that goes with it.

Power

A USB battery bank plugged into the microcontroller is all you really need here.

Control

There are a bunch of ways to control the expressions remotely. We use a cardputer and the ESP-NOW protocol to choose animations but we have thoughts on other cool interfaces too. [TODO]

[upload the cardputer code too]