DPHP 2 - Design Docs & The Age of PowerPoint

During all of the CAD work that took place, I began to flesh out the specifications that would make up the rest of the project.  Here they are in no particular order, although accompanies by nice little blurbs about how they came to be.

A resolution of 16 wide by 24 tall



I was loony enough to count the LEDs on the original Guy-Man helmet at one point.  I think it was something like 15 wide by 33 tall.  That seemed a really arbitrary number, so I settled on 16x24.  It was a multiple of 8, the number of bits in a byte, often a good thing when working with microcontrollers and computers.  it's magically become the ideal size/resolution for innumerable reasons since then.

RGB color scheme



In one of the many aspects of this project that "one ups" the original, I chose to have an RGB (red green blue) color scheme rather than the RGY (red green, combined yellow) of the original helmet.  It seems like in decade or so since Daft Punk's robot debut, things should advance a bit.  Whats one more color right?  With RGB, I can replicate (most of) the rainbow.

Heads up display



This came largely out of necessity at first, but of course needed to be one upped on it's own.  At first it was a small CMOS camera combined with a pair of video goggles, like the kind you find in the back of the Sky Mall magazine.  But if one has a camera and video goggles, one should naturally include an onscreen overlay status display, right?

Suspension of disbelief



This was largely an approach, more than a feature.  Call it the Turing test of a robot costume.  I wanted to have a conversation (albeit limited) with someone without it them pausing to think what's going on.  I didn't want to be the man in the suit or the man pulling the strings.  I didn't want there to be a man at all, at least in peoples eyes.  You'll see this idea at the heart of a lot of the work on this project as we go along.

Local control



largely connected to the above point, I want to be in control, inside the outfit.  It's not a narcissism (not too much anyway) but again to remove the puppet and strings problem.  It's no fun to be pulling the strings, and it's no fun to be pulled either.

Portable power



What fun is all this is it can't run on batteries?  Who want's to hop from power outlet to power outlet at a convention?  Who wants to explain that the getup is a lot cooler if it's plugged in?  All I can say is thank the powers that be for lipo batteries.

Personal cooling



Fans.  the helmet is going to need a number of fans.  You know, race car drivers have those water cooled undergarments as well...

Sound input



Daft Punk are all about the music, why shouldn't a replica be as well.  Stay tuned.

As practical as possible



Clearly the helmet is going to have some heft.  Clearly, there are going to be a lot of wires and a lot of connectors.  Clearly I will have limited mobility and vision.  Clearly I will need a bouncer/handler to keep an eye on me and an eye out for me.  But how clearly will I be able to see in low light conditions?  There's a fix for that too.

I have powerpoint upon powerpoint of ideas I've had, wiring diagrams, cheat sheets, and even more in sketch books.We'll call this the starting point for the cliff notes.