Been a while. I've been working on this nearly non-stop, though my efforts on making my deadline seem to be for naught. More on that later.
ELECTRONICS:
All ribbon cables are built and tested. Everything is working as intended, thankfully!
Housings for the LED colorbars are built. These have since been painted flat black on the outside and reflective silver on the inside
I used white foam (ganked this trick from Lightsaber replicas) to diffuse the LEDs and reduce the hot-spots in the bars. They're still noticeable, but diffused as much as possible without sacrificing too much brightness
One band finished. Both are done and ready, I just don't have a shot yet.
Blueprint for the control box. I've decided to go with AA batteries instead of the 9Vs, mostly due to size issues. The total mAh is actually in favor of the AA's though. There needs to be a few things added to this still, but this was mostly just to make sure all the components would fit. Not shown: Arduino board and microphone/line input board. These are small though, so fitment should be no problem. Its about the size of a thick wallet.
CHROME:
F_CK. I've pulled EIGHT helmets so far, and to date I have ZERO with good chrome. Long story short, I won't be able to make the deadline of the 31st because I don't have a good base to put this thing into. Something happened with the latest batch which looks like it melted the helmet. Really getting tired of making so many of these and getting nothing out of it.
Distortion. The base is .5" wider
And the top bar is kinked and pulled away as well
To say I'm getting frustrated would be an understatement.
On the plus side of things, major thanks to Jimbo for cranking out some fantastic code work. Here's his contribution in action:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsb2LjBo8p8[/media]