[protogen] building the monster

hi all,
the past two weeks, ive been working on something new. im building a protogen fursuit head!

what is that

protogen are an open species of cyborg furries. a big reason for their popularity, and the reason i was drawn to making one, is their visors, these are lit up with led matrices, which are programmed to display different expressions.

my setup is based on the design wafflesdoesart used in their protogen tutorial.

hardware

the protogen's brain is a Raspberry Pi Zero W. this smaller version of the pi is small enough to fit in the cheek. its running PiOS Lite, and will control the other electronics.

the face is a pair of Adafruit LED matrices, 64x32 2.5mm, on the higher end in terms of resolution and the dimensions will fit well into the visor.

the face will be controlled by a series of buttons connected to the pi, which will eventually be sewn into a glove.

the pi and the matrices will be connected to a battery outside the helmet (dont put batteries near your face for extended periods).

i was worried when i got the matrices that the pi wouldnt have enough pins to support them and the buttons at the same time, but the buttons can be plugged into any pin that the matrices dont use.

software

the pi is running a python script that uses the hzeller's RGPMatrix library. each animation consists of a series of image files and a json file detailing order, speed, how they loop, and what button sequence triggers them.

this is my promethean endeavor

thank you for reading
- ciaran