Daft Punk Guy Manuel Helmet

Part 1: Getting Started

 Preface: (Ignore this) In June of 2011 I discovered the blog post of Harrison Krix [Particularly This Post] detailing his Guy Manuel helmet build. Much of what you see in this blog can be seen better in his, so check it out first if you're serious about building one of these.  I've tried to go into more detail on a few things you won't find on Harrison's blog; Things that I wish I had known before starting this project. Without further adieu, here is my take on Guy Manuel's helmet...   _________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfttMuuGOBc&feature=youtu.be

First of all let me say that I skipped a few steps on my build. As such, I did not actually mold, plaster, and cast my own helmet. The reason being, I saw no point in doing so. I figured I could buy a casting and visor for far less than what I would spend making one that meets my expectations. 

This cast was made by Igor Pinski. It'll run you around 300$ if you hit him up on Ebay, but I assure you it is worth it.  You will not find a better cast aside from Volpin Props. Wish the visor area was larger though. 

EDIT: It does look like Harrison is starting to sell these on his website for 350$. Honestly it depends on personal preference. I would have loved to have gotten my hands on a Volpin cast. 

After you're done posing with your newly purchased helmet, the first step will be to cut out the visor. 

Cutting Out The Helmet: Visor

It is best to use a Dremel Tool for this. Leave a small lip to hold the visor in place. I ended up taking mine back to about 1/2 inch in diameter. This cut does not have to be perfect so just eyeball it.

I used the Dremel tool to cut out the visor as well. There's really no good way to this, just go slow. I suggest cutting your visor big at first and go from there. Carefully smooth the edges with sandpaper. You DO NOT want to scratch the visor! (obviously)

Cutting Out the Helmet: Ears & Back Plate

To cut out the ear holes I purchased a 3/4" hole saw bit (seen below), which is the exact area I wanted to cut out. Do this in one cut and save the circle you cut out. 

To do this lip, I glued the circle onto a flat piece of wood and tightened it back into the ear hole. Next I dremeled around the circle on the inside until a sufficient lip was cut out and my decal laid flush with the inside of the helmet. Try to do the back plate in one cut as well. You'll be putting it back on later. 

Your helmet now hangs. Congratulate yourself... 

Backplate Wires

MATERIALS:

1. The Backplate cut out previously.
2. More T-Nuts and Brackets
3. Red, Green, and White Wires (12 gauge - Lowes) 

Repeat the same steps used to attach the light bars (4 brackets). Make sure to set the plate back into the helmet to make space for the wires. Otherwise the plate will not fit your brackets.

Now that the plate is fixed into the helmet begin running the wires on the plate.

To hold the wires, use 3m double stick tape on the back side and roll the wires over the edge of the plate. These wires are purely cosmetic and are not used to wire the circuit boards.

I tried to be as accurate as possible with the pattern. I based this from shots taken from Electroma.

Now drill out the side holes for the Green/Red LEDS and Audio Jack. I drilled the LED holes about 1 inch away from the center hole. Drill each of these a size larger to account for the chroming.

END PART 1: GETTING STARTED

Part 2: Electronics N' Stuff

This part of the build was definitely the most time consuming. I went into this with zero knowledge of soldering or wiring PCB's, so I will assume you have no experience with them either. For this step you will need the following tools.

1. Soldering Gun + Extra soldering gun tips
2. Solder (I used .022" Diameter Rosin Core Solder from Radio Shack)
3. Solder remover (Mistakes will happen)
4. Printed Circuit Boards and Components...

I found these circuit boards specifically designed for this helmet for around 100$ http://plasmado.com/pro2.index.php. This site has literally everything you need for this step. I definitely recommend reading through and becoming familiar with this site before you buy anything.

You can save a few bucks if you use your own breadboards, but printed circuit boards are much more reliable. The components (LED's, Transistors, Resistors, Headers, and Chasers) can be purchased from JameCo or DigiKey. Both are reliable dealers when it comes to electronics.

Lucky for you, I've compiled a confusing list of the components you will need. However, you will want to buy extra of each just in case.

Component List

5mm White LED 20000 mcd FLAT HEAD WIDE ANGLE 180 deg

Light Bar= 64

Chin Bar= 28 Total= 94

Ear board= 2

Red led=2

Green led=2

(A) ¼ Watt - 220 Ohm resistor

Light bar= 64

Chin Bar= 28 Total= 94

Ear board= 2

(B) ¼ Watt - 1K Ohm resistor

Light bar= 16

Chin Bar= 8

Transistor board= 8 Total= 36

Ear board= 4

2N3904 NPN Transistors

Light bar= 16

Chin Bar= 8 Total= 32

Transistor board= 8

Male header pins

Light bar= 3x16

Chin Bar= (6)x 2 & (8)x 2 Total=BUY EXTRA Transistor board= (8)x 2

Ear Board= (6) x 2

Female header pins

Light bar= (3) x 16boards

Chin bar= (6) x 2boards & (8) x 2boards Total=BUY EXTRA

Transistor board= (8) x 2

Ear board= (6) x 2

Housings

Light bar= (3 housing) x 16

Chin bar= (6 housing) x 2 & (8 housing) x 2 Total=BUY EXTRA

Transistor board= (8 housing) x 2

Ear board= (6 housing) x 2

The chaser boards are the brains of the operation. They come programmed with set patterns to control when the LED's light up. These can be bought from Donnie James through his email Donniedj@anothercoilgunsite.com. Each board is 15$ so try not fry these. These are the patterns I chose.

Chaser #1:           5,6,10,13,18,24,28,29,30,32,34,36,41,42,44,46,51,54

Chaser #2 & #3:  4,5,6,7,8,10

SOLDERING/ COMPONENT PLACEMENT

The chasers do not come with the header pins soldered. Above is an example of how to place the headers.

Think of the circuit boards as 3 different sections connected by a 9V battery. The following pictures and diagrams reference the placement of each component within the PCB boards.

Fan Light Board

Chin Boards

Transistor and Ear

HELPFUL HINTS:

Once all the components are in place, solder them to the boards. This process is not hard, but it is time consuming. Also if you have never soldered before I recommend searching Youtube for How To and Technique videos. The purpose of the solder is to provide a good connection; NOT TO HOLD THE COMPONENTS ON THE BOARD. Also make sure to not to apply too much heat when working with the transistors. They have a tendency to overheat. Note: Resistors have no polarity, therefore they can be placed in any orientation. LED's have +/- ends and must be placed accordingly. Look for the flat side of the LED and line this up with the flat LED drawing on the board. Transistors have 3 connections (NPN). The 2 N connections are behind the P forming a triangle. It's placement should be pretty self explanatory. 

After all the boards are soldered, examine the back of the board for bridges (areas where two soldered joints are connected) and cold joints (ares where the solder did not flow properly) as these can cause problems. Clip off the extra wires from the components if you haven't already. Note: Some people say clipping the connections after can disturb the joints and lead to a bad connection. I didn't have any problems with this, however it should be considered.

Now that your ready for wiring you'll need a few more things.

1. Wire Stripper
2. Rainbow Wire (approx. 20 feet)
3. Wire Headers
4. Header Crimpers

CONNECTION DIAGRAMS

Follow these wiring diagrams.

Fan Light Board Connections

Chin Boards Connections

Ear Connections

This picture shows a simple jig I made to hold the PCB's in place.

1 connection down, 15 more to go... Keep these connections color coordinated. 

  

Pattern Test Run #1. Notice that the first set of LED's are not working on both sides. This is a common problem that usually has to do with the wire connection for those circuit boards. If certain LED's on the circuit board are not lighting up this can indicate a problem with either the LED or solder joint. In this case the whole board was not receiving power. I reconnected the wires to the board and it worked fine. 

                                         

Do the same with the chins boards using connection diagrams.

END PART 2: ELECTRONICS

                       

Part 3: Light Rigs

For this part you will need the following items..

1. Flexible Handicap Parking Sign 
2. Plastic Super Glue
3. 3m Outdoors Double Stick Tape
4. Color Gels
5. Exacto Knife
6. PCB's from the last post.
7. Automobile Pin striping 
8. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Foam 
9. Aluminum Bracket (Lowes/Make sure it can be bent easily)
10. T-Nuts and Screws

Using a few measurements from the helmet I drew up a simple plan in AutoCAD that would fit my helmet. If you're using one of Pinski's helmets, email me and I'll be glad to send you the file for this. If not, these plans will not work for your helmet.

Sketch the plans on the back side of the handicap sign and cut out the base of the rig. After the rig is cut out, start bending it at each bar until it matches the curve of your helmet. This bend is very important so make sure to get it right. I learned the hard way and ended up rebending the rig in these pictures.

(Example of how much bend you should end up with)

Start constructing the skeleton of the rig using measured strips, cut from the handicap sign. 

Paint the inside of the rig with a silver metallic spray paint for maximum brightness. I found that there is really no noticeable difference in doing this, so this step is optional.

To secure each board to the rig I backed them with the 3m Doublestick tape. This method works well to hold the boards down and allows them to be adjusted easily if necessary. 

Start cutting strips of the Magic Eraser Foam to fit into each bar. A lot of other helmets I have seen seem to get this part wrong. The point of this step is to diffuse the light of the LED's so that you get even light flow over the color gels. This will make the lights look 100 times better trust me. 

Now start cutting your color gels to fit over the foam. These do not have to be perfectly straight and may overlap for now. Glue each gel down using the plastic super glue. The pattern for the colors follows the order of the spectrum.

PURPLE

BLUE

LIGHT BLUE

GREEN

LIGHT GREEN

YELLOW

ORANGE

RED

Straighten out the bars by outlining them with the automobile pin-striping. This will give them a finished look.

Hook up the connections and test out the lights. (You may want to do this before pin striping the edges) Adjust the foam to fix low light areas.

To fix the rig to the helmet you'll need the aluminum brackets and T-nuts. 

Start by cutting off 4 pieces of aluminum about 5 or 6 inches. Drill holes in the ends of each before you start bending. Take the T-nuts and find a flat place on the top and bottom of the inside of your helmet to fix them to. I found that sanding the area and super gluing the T-nuts to the helmet worked best. (Epoxy does not stick well to the surface of the helmet) 

Now start bending the aluminum so it fits flat on the back of the rig and connects to the T-Nut. To hold the brackets onto the rig I used the same 3m Double stick tape. Tighten the screws and adjust if needed.

Put on the visor to make sure the light bars do not interfere with it. Also, check if the bars are even. This should give you a good idea of what the finished lights will look like.

END PART 3: LIGHT RIGS