Daft Punk helmet (Thomas Bangalter version)

During my last year in high school in 2013-2014 I built the helmet. The complete process of building took roughly 4 months. I tried to get access to 3d-printer, which whould have made the process a lot easier, but none was available at the time. In the end I found the great Volpin Props blog and decided to go the same route, building a model, creating a mold and casting the final helmet from plastic. Although it was extremely rewarding building the helmet little by little, it required a lot of time and effort, barely making each step just well enough to proceed.

The process for building plastic cast follows Volpin Props’ process. Electronics was completely custom built, containing 8x40 led array controller with Arduino Mega over SPI-bus and led array drivers.

Overview

Inside

Front had 2 tiny fans, which were in fact of much help! Without them the air gets quite warm very quickly.

On the rear there’s Arduino Mega, which was difficult to fit in the helmet. Also there’s a custom built power adapter next to microcontroller to feed current from Li-Po battery with a safety limit.

Building