Conducting research for a potential project

Using Arduino Project Guidance
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Hello. I’m an absolute noob.

I am looking to create a fairly complex semi-animated robotic mask. Everything seems viable own its own, but I’m not sure how feasible this would actually be to construct.

I’ve done a lot of research on most of what I want to accomplish and I’m at the point where I’m (hoping) I can start planning to build a prototype. Items with (+) would be ideal, but I may drop if they aren’t worth it.

I would like to:

(+) Use eye tracking device to control the look direction of a pair of eyes light-up eyes. Ideally, these eyes will just react to the wearer’s look direction using up, down, left right.

Blinking would be a very simply animated led, a simple shutter effect as though a window shade was being drawn down to close (on to off) and the reverse to open (off to on). I would like to track each eye individually for this to permit “winking”.

Voice changer: Mic within the mask paired with an external speaker to distort voice. (Probably my weakest area re: research)

Sound activated light. 3 lighted areas of the mask will light up with speech.

Two areas of the mask will continuously lit up.

Cooling fan: Either continuous or (ideally) thermally controlled.

Battery pack(s) for the power source(s)

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Hi,
Welcome to the forum.

Please read the post at the start of any forum , entitled "How to use this Forum".
OR
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=712198.0

Can you please tell us your electronics, programming, arduino, hardware experience?

Have you built anything with Arduino before?

Thanks.. Tom... :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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If you are a complete noob , then this far too ambitious .
Get yourself a UNO , a few switches resistors and leds.
I would experiment a bit and write yourself some bits of code - study the IDE examples and get a feel for writing code , so you know what you are capable of ( a man has to know his limitations ...)

You can also google eye tracking technology to get a feel for how this might work, how others have done and so on ( not easy ).

If you try and start with something hard there is the danger of getting frustrated and giving up

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I have a lot of experience with building and repairing personal devices (Windows/Ubuntu).

I used to mess with Python back in High School, and I’ve been learning/refreshing myself using Code Academy.

I’ve never used Arduino before but it looks like it’s capable of doing everything I’m looking to do, which is why I decided to post.

I understand what you’re saying but I don’t care for being immediately told how I handle challenges. You do not know me and the reason I have proposed this project as I have was specific: I suppose my question would have been better worded as “Can one controller handle all of these operations at once”.

I don’t appreciate being discouraged and I while I am not a man, I indeed know my limits.

I wanted to know if the project is physically possible before investing in purchases. A hyper simple kit will not do me much good, I have a methodology for testing prototypes already planned out because I already have googled... That’s what I mean by “I have researched”.

As far as building the eye tracking device, I already have researched that a lot— it’s the communication from the track to the servos I am currently researching.

So, let me try again:

Can a single controller handle these functions all at once or should I make different modules with their own controllers as slaves to a master board?

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It seems like either approach would work, there might be a good argument for separate modules but either way will be a challenge for an absolute noob.

One processor: a nightmare of getting everything to work together well and share resources successfully.

Modules: planned well, a good opportunity to get small parts functioning well, then a nightmare of getting them all talking however they must to the central control and/or each other.

Just decide what kind of fun you want to have. One ton of fun is approx. one nightmare.

Do you have an eye tracking device in mind or on hand already? If so, what make and model? It is this part that might swing your decision, but it is hard to say without knowing more about this eye tracking magic.

HTH

a7

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You weren't. But please feel free to ignore suggestions.

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The first line of your post said you were a “absolute noob” !! My response was for a such a noob !!
Ho hum

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Leonine is saying that she will not get frustrated and give up. Perhaps it is her experience that in these situations she digs in, does research, runs tests and succeeds in the end. :grinning:

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It's lucky you are not dealing with 240V. Then you would have got a right telling off. Lol.

I'd say go for it. There will be holds ups and pitfalls on the way, but these things can be overcome if you are determined enough. It sounds like your research is telling you it is doable; and that you have the all important 'can do' attitude.

Jump in at the deep end, and learn your way out of it. It's a good way.

One Arduino board can easily handle the blink shutter, the leds that randomly light up, the continuous leds, and the cooling fan.

The voice changer may need a separate Arduino board. This will avoid the speech routines being interrupted by some of the other routines, and possibly interfering with the speech pattern. I'm just guessing here as I've not yet delved into audio on the Arduino, but it looks like audio needs intensive/constant processing (I may be wrong).

I don't know about the mechanical eyes. It sounds complicated. You may probably need a separate board for that (at least to start with).
I recently messed around with two Oled 0.96" displays, and managed to get an eye on each display. Got the eyes to blink, look up, look down, look left, look right, etc. Maybe this would be something to explore as it avoids getting into mechanics, and may be quicker to roll out the first prototype.

So, maybe plan on 3 boards to start with. Once you have each board/module up and running you should/may realise that you can reduce the number of separate boards.

I've been using the 'Mega2560 compact' boards lately. I would recommend going for those. Those boards gives you a lot of memory and a lot of pins to play with. For the power you get from the Mega2560 compact, these are quite cheap, and you can afford to 'not use' a lot of the pins and memory.
I've had a few projects where I started out using a Uno or a ProMini, and had to move onto a mega2560 due to restrictions as the program grew.
There are other more powerful boards, but I don't know those.

I presume the boards and power supply would be located separate to the mask.

I normally research it like you have and then cost it out, and then see if I really fancy doing it. If you feel comfortable with throwing say £100 on it, and many of hours programming, then do it. It's great fun, especially when you get it all working.

Steve

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UNO is a poor choice for practical projects. Difficult to connect as it has socket headers.

Nano more appropriate, or if you fancy you need more memory, the compact version of the 2560.

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We're coming from experience. Noob's who want to jump into the deep end invariably fail and give up. If they persist, they wind up spending 200 hours on a 2-hour project.

My advice to all noobs is to buy a development kit, breadboard various sensors, buttons, LEDs, etc. Run the example sketches in the IDE. This gives you some background with hardware and using the IDE. If you have your project blocked out (block diagram or storyboard) work on one function at a time. Only when you have a function working, set it aside and work on the next. When you have all the pieces working individually, only then start to integrate them together.

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Hi, @leonine_ix

This will require some computing power, you need to go to ESP32 or any of the STM controllers.
Have you researched eye tracking and the hardware and software and speed needed to accomplish it.
I am not telling you how to do your project, but this aspect requires a higher level of hardware and software.

Tom... :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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Hi,

This could be done with two OLED displays and some simple animation.

Tom.... :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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Hi,

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/nootropicdesign/arduino-audio-hacker-realtime-voice-changer-611b79
Tom.... :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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For the first (the eye-tracking device stuff): you'd have to use a better board to handle the eye tracker. I don't say that Arduino isn't fit for it ( even I am a beginner but with a little bit of programming experience), but just because if you are looking forward to make a project where the eye-tracker has to do its job with high speed and precision, you may require a powerful board, or perhaps get accustomed to the Arduino FreeRTOS Library ( a nice tool to execute tasks synchronously). That library is a marvellous one according to me. Also, I dunno if eye-direction sensors are available ( I have never bought or used one myself :laughing: ) , so that part of the project is up to you.

Voice changer is something that is amazing but at the same time, one thing I can't explain perfectly. You'd require a mic to capture your voice, some algorithm to change the characteristics of the captured voice (esp. quality, timbre, frequency, etc.). A better idea will be to use a machine learning algorithm to recognise what you speak (preferably an FFT to understand and change the characteristics) and use the TTS library to convert it to another voice ( I haven't used it myself, so I don't guarantee you that it will change your voice to anybody else's voice [except the one built into it] ) or simply blast the result of the FFT-analysed-and -mutated (:laughing:) voice over a speaker.

Voice activated LED is even more feasible ! :smiley:

PS : This was just a draft; I saw just now a few posts by @TomGeorge that will be helpful for you ! :slight_smile:

Logs:

  1. Just edited a bit of overused English :laughing:
  2. Edited line 1, paragraph 1
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Tom- I built a Halloween prop (a full-size skeleton) with the Adafruit OLED eyes. It works great. Now the kids come here every Halloween looking for 'Bones'.

The library allows for control of eye movement and blinking. This year I plan to add a couple of PIR sensors to turn the eyes toward any movement the PIR detects.

Here is a brief MP4 from the first year:
Skelton at Halloween.zip (381.3 KB)

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Hi,
Ohh yes, very nice mate, I like it.. :+1: :+1:
I'll show it to my grandson tonight, he will love it.

My Halloween last year was a Jack a Lantern with Ultrasonic and Audio player board.
When ever it was approached it played screams, evil laughter etc.
I modularised it so I could adapt it to Christmas decoration/animation. (With suitable audio changes :laughing: :grinning: :laughing:)

Tom... :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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Last Halloween we had a trio of singing pumpkins using a Raspberry Pi4 playing a video file from AtmosFX.com through an inexpensive video projector. Surprisingly, the audience response to that gag was underwhelming.

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In my case, COVID and the fact that were we in a new housing estate and cold weather, kept the visitors to a minimum.

Tom.. :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

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