LoTR Inspired Dwarven Helmets #WearableWednesday

It’s always an appropriate time to make a dwarven helmet, esp now that Punished Props Academy put this helpful build on YouTube:

On their quest to build everything from EVA foam they teamed up to create a LotR dwarf style helmet from just a few sheets of EVA foam. Follow along as they use simple tools and materials to transform this humble material into an epic, wearable piece of art.

See more

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

New Guide: Sew a Halloween Costume Face Mask #halloween

Halloween is just around the corner. Everyone is a little anxious this year – with Covid 19 still threatening our neighborhoods and cities, we want to keep each other as safe as possible. But we all desperately need a little fun and connection, and Halloween really brings neighborhoods together.

So we’re happy to present this new tutorial from Erin St. Blaine: Sew a costume face mask over your real face mask, and keep those trick-or-treaters safe this year. This tutorial has three free downloadable sewing patterns to make an animal face or a spooky Plague Doctor mask, all of which can transform your look into something silly that will make the kids laugh when they come to your door. Or make one for your young trick-or-treater that will make her want to keep her mask on all night long.

From the guide:

Halloween is such a fun holiday, and traditionally includes mask-wearing to complete your costume. This year, face masks have been a daily fashion choice for many of us, so here’s a guide that focuses on making that face mask a little extra special for the spookiest day of the year.

Use colored felt to add a bird beak or monkey face to any face mask. Or create a “plague-doctor” style mask from

scratch to bring a bit of historical authenticity to your costume this year.

We’ve included printable patterns and sewing directions. You’ll need fabric and interfacing or craft felt, scissors, pins, and a sewing machine (or a needle and thread and some patience).

Learn to make your Halloween Face Mask here: https://learn.adafruit.com/halloween-costume-face-mask/overview

Happy Halloween!

DIY Werewolf Costume Will Give You Pause #Halloween

With two full moons this October — the second on Halloween proper — everyone’s got werewolves on the brain. Award-winning Dutch cosplayer Willow Creative is celebrating the occasion with a no-holds-barred, head-to-toebeans werewolf costume build, and you can follow her progress on social media.

Inspired by the dashing werewolf of Van Helsing, the project starts with a set of digitigrade stilts, adding about a foot of height and providing that distinctive dog-leg shape. Made from aluminum extrusion, the stilts are robust and lightweight. Willow’s web site provides a build log so you can incorporate the same in your own creature-suit ideas.

Keeping the rest in proportion, 3D-printed finger extensions provide the framework for a correspondingly massive set of hand paws. STL files for the finger extensions came from Thingiverse…so again, we can all benefit from this work, no “behind the curtain” secrets in this costume build — let’s all be werewolves!

The torso, head and skin remain to be done. With just three weeks before Halloween, this will be an intense build! You can follow along with Willow Creative’s progress and cosplay insights on Instagram and Twitter.

DIY Werewolf Costume Will Give You Pause #Halloween

With two full moons this October — the second on Halloween proper — everyone’s got werewolves on the brain. Award-winning Dutch cosplayer Willow Creative is celebrating the occasion with an no-holds-barred, head-to-toebeans werewolf costume build, and you can follow her progress on social media.

Inspired by the dashing werewolf of Van Helsing, the project starts with a set of digitigrade stilts, adding about a foot of height and providing that distinctive dog-leg shape. Made from aluminum extrusion, the stilts are robust and lightweight. Willow’s web site provides a build log so you can incorporate the same in your own creature-suit ideas.

Keeping the rest in proportion, 3D-printed finger extensions provide the framework for a correspondingly massive set of hand paws. STL files for the finger extensions came from Thingiverse…so again, we can all benefit from this work, no “behind the curtain” secrets in this costume build.

The torso, head and skin remain to be done. With just three weeks before Halloween, this will be an intense build! You can follow along with Willow Creative’s progress and cosplay insights on Instagram and Twitter.

Odin Makes Witcher Armor with Felicia #WearableWednesday

First in the series from Odin Makes on YouTube. Stream starts at 1:30:

We are working with Foam Armory chainmail to make Witcher armor.
first video in a series, until it’s done!

See more

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

New Guide: Glowing Wire Wrap Necklace Tutorial – Programmable with USB Charging

Get inspired with the latest tutorial from the magical workshop of Erin St Blaine: how to make an LED necklace insert that’s small, light, and compact with a USB-rechargeable battery and up to 23 addressable NeoPixels — all within a very low profile, 2″ wide package. Combined with a colorful resin “stone” and a gorgeous wire wrapped setting, this necklace would make a stunning addition to your cosplay (it looks like a magical amulet!) or can be classy enough to wear on the red carpet with a fancy evening dress. It’s versatile enough to slip into a top hat or belt buckle too, and we think it would also work for Iron Man or Steven Universe with a few mods.

From the guide:

Sometimes you want to add animated lights to your costume or project and you’re really limited on space. Necklaces are a great example of this – a glowing pendant can be so striking, but if it’s too big and bulky it can cross the line to “gaudy” pretty quickly.

This tutorial aims to make the smallest possible NeoPixel module or insert for your project. We’ve worked to make it super small, at around 1/2″ thick and about 2″ across.

This tiny package still contains all the niceties:

• 7-12 addressable NeoPixel lights
• A compact on/off switch
• A rechargeable battery with 4+ hours of battery life
• Onboard USB charging capability

We’re using an ItsyBitsy M0 microcontroller, which can be programmed with CircuitPython, MakeCode or Arduino, so you’ve got lots of options, and we’ve included an easy-to-customize code sample as well.

Check it out and add lights to your look! Full tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/neopixel-led-necklace-insert-with-usb-charging

 

New Guide: Make a Sound-Reactive LED Ukulele with NeoPixels

Swing into summer with our latest tutorial from Erin St. Blaine: make a light-up, sound and motion reactive ukulele with NeoPixel strips and a Feather NRF52840 Sense microcontroller. The onboard microphone and accelerometer in the Feather Sense pick up the volume of your strumming, for a seamless sound reactive mode that works with all the different customizable LED animations.

This ukulele also has a motion-reactive mode and uses FFT technology for note-sensing. Pluck a high A note and the ukulele will cycle between animation modes. We think that’s pretty neat!

From the guide:

Ukuleles are little joy machines. They’re easy to play, portable, light, and really inexpensive – you can get a fairly good sounding one for around $40-$50.

This clear plastic ukulele from Kala simply begs to be upgraded with rainbow lights. Engineer an over-the top tacky Tiki musical experience for your audience at your next luau.

This LED ukulele goes even further, with loads of customizable animations and a sound reactive mode. Match your animation playlist with your song repertoire, and bring the music to life as your uke pulses along with your strumming.

We’ve also used the FFT capabilities of our hardware to add note-sensing to this project. Change animation modes or turn sound reactive mode on or off just by plucking a particular note on your fretboard.

And just for giggles, we’ve added a Guitar-Hero-style “Rockstar tilt” mode — tilt the neck of your ukulele up during your big finish to trigger a colorful lightning animation.

This ukulele is maika’i loa! (That’s Hawaiian for awesome..)

See the full build tutorial here: https://learn.adafruit.com/light-up-reactive-ukulele/overview

Forging a Glowing Katana #CyberPunk

The YouTube channel Faraway Forge shows the making of a real glowing Katana. The light effects are created with some EL wire and tape. Probably not the best piece for cosplay or conventions (keep the big knifes at home plz) but it looks very cool!

Forging a Katana in a futuristic Cyberpunk style. The goal of this project was to create a cross between a Lightsaber and a very real, very functional Katana. This is a detailed look at the steps involved in the build, the most notable of which are: forging both a back and front section for the blade, creating an artificial differential heat treat by tempering the two sections of the blade at different temperatures, making the handle out of scrap metal, sand blasting the handle components with a homemade sand blaster, and finally lights! The glow of the blade and handle are created with electroluminescent wire and tape respectively. This stuff is produces a great effect, and is driven by a circuit board and homemade battery box which are entirely self-contained in the handle of the katana.

See more!

New Guide: Glowing LED Bullwhip with Motion & Sound Reaction

This week we’re saddened to learn of the death of Ennio Morricone. Morricone was an Italian composer, most famous for his work on Western movie soundtracks. His Spaghetti Western scores are iconic and unique, and really defined the genre. That lonely cowboy music that plays in your head whenever you think of a Western — that was Morricone. The world has lost a fabulous artist. We would love to dedicate our newest project tutorial to his legacy.

Complete your Cowboy (or Space Cowboy) cosplay with this interactive LED Bullwhip build from Erin St. Blaine. This build uses a Feather nRF52840 Sense board and PropMaker Wing attached to a 6 foot leather whip. Two strands of sturdy NeoPixel dots provide the light. This is a fully usable, crack-able whip that fires animations both when the whip cracks (sound reactive) and when the whip swings (motion reactive).

From the guide:

This whip is made from a Feather NRF32840 Sense board soldered to a PropMaker wing. It’s got sound reactivity – whenever the whip cracks, a bright animation lights up the whole length of the whip.

But we can do you one better n’ that. This whip’s also got motion sensitivity, with two levels of swing-based animations, triggered by the motion of your arm. Choose your own custom colors and speeds to truly make it yours.

This project requires a bit of tricky solderin’ and a bit of patience. But the end result will complete you, and feed that little outlaw in your soul.

Full tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/led-bullwhip/overview

LED Mermaid Glimmer Kid’s Show LIVE Online Friday July 10 2020

Here’s a glorious chance to see Mermaid Glimmer, played by Adafruit’s staff writer Erin St. Blaine, performing live online at the California Mermaid Convention! The show is Friday July 10 at 3pm PDT (that’s 12pm EDT for you east-coasters). Tickets Available Now – Just $10 for a 30 minute kid’s show Erin St Blaine, AKA Mermaid Glimmer, is the founder and owner of Fire Pixie Entertainment. She’s dedicated more than 15 years of her life to making kids laugh, smile, and believe in magic. Erin is an artist and maker, and the Mermaid Glimmer tail is a world-class marvel: it runs on a Circuit Playground Express and has over 180 NeoPixel lights onboard that change color and animate as she swims. Mermaid Glimmer will sing and play her ukulele, tell stories, do magic tricks, and bring the world of mermaids and magic to life while encouraging creativity and a passion for science and nature. She’ll also do underwater tricks during her live show. Your kids will be glued to the screen. While you’re at the convention, check out some of the other amazing Mermaid performers too! Mermaid Atlantis will be performing a giant bubble show, and Mermaid Nymphia, the Bay Area’s lovely and gorgeous Trans mermaid, will tell stories from her mermaid treasure grotto. There’s a lot going on, and since it’s online, you can attend from anywhere in the world! Score. We hope to see you all there. Please tell your friends! The more the merrier, and we Mermaids are so grateful for all your help and support during this challenging time.  More about Erin and her Electronics Wizardry can be found at Erinstblaine.com

California Mermaid Convention Ticket Link Here – $10 for a 30 minute show with Mermaid Glimmer Friday July 10 at 3:00 pm PST (that’s 12:00 PM EST) More info at http://californiamermaidcon.com/

 

Find Out More

 

“Best of Adafruit” Photo & Video Series Day 60 #photography #art #design #wfh #bestofadafruit

“Best of Adafruit” Photo & Video Series Day 60 #photography #art #design #wfh #bestofadafruit

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Throughout this week, the Adafruit photo team will be posting a “Best of Adafruit” photo each day!

Check in as we take you back to all of our favorite photos and videos.

For our day 60 post, here’s a different kind of face mask! Why not bring the costume ball indoors? Learn to adorn masquerade masks with LEDs, three ways!

The above guide will show you how to make three masks at different difficulty levels:

Super Simple Sequin Mask: A few LED sequins and a battery pack, no programming or microcontroller required! Just a little soldering and gluing will get you illuminated accents in under an hour.

NeoPixel GEMMA Mask: If it’s color-changing animations you crave, wire up some individual NeoPixels, and a GEMMA microcontroller. Use our sample code or write your own animations! 1-4 hours, depending on your soldering experience

Audio-Reactive Mask: A microphone monitors audio levels and uses loudness to control the brightness of some LED sequins. Use our sample code or mod it up to do something different. 1-4 hours, depending on your soldering experience

NEW GUIDE: MP3 Playback in CircuitPython with Lars the Sloth Puppet @adafruit @johnedgarpark @cvtsoftserve #adafruit

“Oh hello, CVT Joseph…” Check out  John Park’s new guide — if you dare.

You can now play MP3 files directly in CircuitPython with no dedicated decoding hardware! You’ll be able to use this new capability in all sorts of projects, including this creepy Lars the Sloth voice box project!

Learn how to playback .mp3 files in CircuitPython on the Feather M4 or nRF52840, and how to use the Propmaker FeatherWing for tap detection sound triggering and audio amplification to a small speaker embedded right inside your adorable murder puppet.

New Guide: How to Solder NeoPixels — Beginner Tutorial #adafruit #neopixel

We’ve got a great new tutorial from Erin St. Blaine on the Adafruit Learn System: Make it Glow – How to Solder NeoPixels. If you’ve wanted to get started with making light up costumes, projects, or artwork, or have just been looking for a new hobby, this is a really great place to start. From the guide:

This guide is for beginners who are ready to take the next step in DIY electronics: putting that soldering iron to use to add NeoPixel or other addressable LED lights to your project.

You don’t have to be able to solder to use NeoPixels! Here is a beginner tutorial that shows how to use NeoPixels with no soldering: Make it Glow – Your First NeoPixel Project

However, there are times when soldering is really the best option. If you want to use NeoPixel rings, or individual pixels, or create more elaborate or complicated designs with multiple strips, there’s really no way to do it without soldering.

The good news: it’s not as hard as you think! There are a fair number of tools to acquire, but once you’ve got your station set up, a whole world of creative possibilities will open up for you.

In this guide, we’ll recommend some tools and equipment that every DIY electronics maker should have in their workshop. Then, we’ll go over the techniques and skills needed to get a good solder connection, and how to secure your connections it so they are sturdy and reliable.

Finally, we’ll cover some techniques for repairing broken strips, and troubleshooting help for when your project just won’t behave the way you want.

 

Check it out — we can’t wait to see what you create!

New Guide: Make it Glow – Your First NeoPixel Project

You want to add lights to your costume but you don’t know where to start.

Every time you look at a beginning electronics guide, it talks about things like resistors and voltage, and after a few minutes you just close the window, because you don’t need to be an expert. You just want to add lights to your costume. Why is this so hard?

Well, today’s your lucky day! Erin St Blaine has just launched a new tutorial: Make it Glow – Your First NeoPixel Project.

This very easy beginner guide will tell you exactly what to do to get your costume glowing. You’ll find out which lights are the best for costumes, which controller to use, and what kind of battery you’ll need. She’ll walk you through setup with no soldering iron or fancy tools required (except some wire strippers).

Once your lights are glowing, she’ll hand you the reins and point you at a ton of sample code that you can download and tweak to make your project work exactly the way you want.

From the guide:

Add animated programmable lights to your costume or project. This first-timer guide will walk you through the basics and get you up and running in minutes.

You don’t need any fancy soldering equipment or programming knowledge — Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express makes it really simple, so you can spend your time on making your project amazing and unique.

We’ll be using NeoPixels in this guide. NeoPixel is a fancy name for lights you can program.

Read more on the Adafruit Learning System

New Guide: How To Sew a Cotton Face Mask #facemask

We’ve posted a new tutorial: how to sew a cotton mask to help slow the spread of Covid19. This guide is aimed at beginners or non-sewers who are eager to learn.

From the guide:

Keep folks safe and stylish this spring by making your own cotton face mask. This guide details how to make a double layered face mask using a dish towel and part of a t-shirt. The mask is held on using two hair elastics.

The only other things you’ll need are a pair of scissors, a marker, and a needle and thread. If you have a sewing machine, it’s easy to use that instead of hand-sewing — but nobody should be lacking a fancy new mask because they don’t have fancy machine, so we’ve focused this guide on making the mask by hand.

Tutorial Link: https://learn.adafruit.com/sew-a-cotton-face-mask/overview

Hand-sewing can be quite relaxing, so pull up your chair by the fire, thread your needle, and make masks for everyone in your family.

We’ve also included a few resources for places to donate your handmade masks.

Marshawn Lynch’s Character Wears a Light Up Mood Shirt #WearableWednesday #WestWorld #SciFi

WestWorld is back to fill the sci-fi hole in your life. If you caught episode 1 you probably noticed the awesome word shirt Marshawn Lynch was wearing. Different words lit up indicating the characters mood. Such a cool idea, I can’t wait to see how the cosplay versions of this work out.

C-Net highlighted the shirt and some other not-so-distant-future tech that the show has created.

A series of words on the front describe moods like sad, scared, bored and angry. Whatever he feels, the word for that mood lights up white. Throughout most of the episode the word amused is lit.

Later, in a scene where he has to remove someone from a club, Lynch’s character gets punched in the face and the word angry lights up. But when the character fights back the word amused lights back up.

Read more!

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

New Guide: Burning Fire Wizard Staff – Motion Reactive with Lights & Sounds

 

Check out the latest tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System from Erin St Blaine: the Burning Fire Wizard Staff.

Make a motion-reactive Wizard Cosplay Staff from a plastic water bottle, a polycarbonate tube, and expanding foam. This staff looks wicked cool, and has three different motion-activated animations with sound effects. The tutorial shows you how to customize the sounds and light colors, so it plays to your own Wizard, Skeletor, Gandalf, or Xena cosplay (or whatever else you can dream up!)

From the guide:

Complete your Wizard or Druid cosplay with a glowing, ever-burning fire staff. This prop is lightweight and sturdy, and made from inexpensive materials. You don’t need much in the way of sculpting ability to create something organic and magical, that looks as though it was cut from the Yggdrasil with an enchanted axe and then imbued with fires from the Mines of Moria before serving the White Witch Jadis for a century or two and then falling into your hands at the end of a rollicking adventure.

You’ll need some soldering ability, a little creativity, and a willingness to get a bit messy. You can upload our CircuitPython code as-is, or it’s easy to change the colors and sound effects to complement your own Wizard or Barbarian character. This would also make a wonderful staff for a monster or Fairy Queen with a few stylistic variations.

 

See the full build tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System!

Slasher from Monster Hunter World #3DThursday #3DPrinting

Shared by BlacksmithingGamer on Thingiverse:

I scaled this project up 2800% for the size in the video

This is a model of the Hellish Slasher that is upgraded from the devine slasher in Monster Hunter World.

Download the files and learn more

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

New Guide: Frozen-Inspired Temperature-Sensing Pendant

The latest tutorial from Erin St. Blaine will teach you how to make a Frozen II inspired pendant for your young maker friend (or for you and your own sweet style) featuring elemental images that change based on the temperature of the air. The TFT Gizmo inside the pendant will display a snowflake when it’s cold, a spinning leaf image when it’s warm, and a lovely purple flame when it’s hot. From the guide:

Discover your inner Snow Queen with this temperature sensing pendant. Invoke the elements of snow, air, and fire using your breath or body heat (or your Ice Queen Superpowers). The pendant will display a snowflake, a spinning leaf, or a lovely purple flame animation depending on the warmth of the air.

Inspired by the elemental spirits in Disney’s Frozen II movie, this pendant will be sure to inspire and excite any Queen Elsa fans, and add an element of magic to your cosplay or halloween costume.

This project uses Adafruit’s TFT Gizmo, a Circuit Playground Bluefruit, and a 3d printed case. There’s no soldering or coding involved — just a few screws to tighten, and a couple files to upload — so it’s a wonderful beginner project if you’re just starting out in the world of electronic cosplay, or if you have a young helper who’s getting interested in making stuff.

Check out the full tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System here: Frozen-Inspired Animated Temperature Sensing Pendant Guide

Adafruit Weekly Editorial Round-Up: Learn Python from the NSA, Presidents’ Day 2020 shipping updates, A Tree with Animated Eyes and Motion Sensor Tutorial, & more!

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ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

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We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.

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BLOG

Chris put in a FOIA request to the NSA for their Python training materials and got back a 400-page printout of their COMP 3321 training course – PDF. Read more.

More BLOG:

• Presidents’ Day 2020 – USPS Orders Not Shipping Monday February 17
• Valentine’s Day Gift Guide 2020
• BLE Synth with the Feather nRF52840 and Circuit Playground Bluefruit
• Comparing Lithium-Ion Power Tool Battery Packs – Cheap vs. DeWalt

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LEARN

Tree with Animated Eyes and Motion Sensor – Bring Your Forest to life with MonsterM4sk by Erin St Blaine

This tutorial goes into detail about the Monster M4sk setup process, and gives a lot of info about how I built the tree to house it. It’s not a step-by-step tree-build tutorial, but it will definitely give you the tools and a road map of how to create your own tree or monster or movie prop using expanding foam and a few simple hand tools.

More LEARN

• NeoPixel LED Heart Necklace
• Making a PyPortal User Interface with DisplayIO
• Bluetooth Cycling Speed & Cadence Sensor Display with Clue
• CircuitPython TFT Candy Hearts

Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!