Mynock

I had an accident a few days ago where I accidentally destroyed my AP helmet faceplate by driving over it with my truck... oops. Lesson learned: don't leave stuff on the garage floor and then forget to put it away. So, now I have to get another lid from AP. *sigh* However, first kits will be ready to go next week, since the earpads have already been made (i have my wife to thank for this, as she was the one who did the sewing). I'll be offering the first few units at a much reduced price in return for you guys providing me some feedback as to how everything is working, fitting, etc, and suggestions on how to make it better. I'll come up with a $ value in the next few days, and post pictures of the units.

If you place the mics by the teeth, you will be talking almost directly into them, and deafening yourself in the process. These mics are very sensitive. The closer the mics are to a constant source of sound (like in the teeth), the quieter you will have to run the setup as it will have the chance to feedback more frequently. Placing them in a neutral area farther away from any constant source of loud sound, such as on the sides, would reduce this, and allow you to turn the volume up higher. in any case, I am making the wires long enough to place anything anywhere you want; the beauty is that you can experiment with the setup by temporarily positioning stuff around until you find the sweet spot.

Earpads are now finished! Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to rock and roll. I'll have photos of the entire setup as it looks by Sunday!

Okay, in order of appearance on this thread, here is the interest list. I just ordered enough of everything to make 10 units to start. The first 10 people on the list will receive PMs once everything is ready to roll, and the final price is set. After that, provided the first 10 people like the setup (and feel they can't live without it), I'll go ahead and make more. This is all very expensive to start up, as you can imagine, and I'm doing all this in my spare time, so I can't take very large orders to start. I appreciate all of you sticking around, as things slowly materialize! 1) Dday 2) Uncle 3) Nicol Bolas 4) Dizzydevil105 5) Evilboy 6) boomshakra 7) Emilio Estevez 8) Dougherty.D 9) Oztrooper 10)crafty 11) hikeba 12) arbilest 13) Spectre 14) HockeyTrooper 15) jimb 16) TK-8817 17) Silent 18) Vadier 19) Felice 20) columbiamo 21) TK5621 22) Ten80p 23) Dancin' TK 24) Wolfman37 25) Duras 26) Paratrooper 27) Solcar23 28) 8BitBry

It's possible, and would be ideal however I haven't actually seen an amp board that is capable of inputting two mics, mixing the signal and outputting to one stereo out. I spoke to my supplier, and to design one is possible, however we would need to do an extremely large first order to make it worth everyone's while. Since this is such a new project, I'm going to run it as is for now, and depending on success/reviews, I may take it the "custom single board" route in the future. And yes, these are the same boards from the helmet in the video. I accidentally used a screenshot of a different amp board in the video, but ultimately the amps I'm using now and in my eFX lid are the same unit. The only customization is that I took the microphones off the boards and put them on wires, and feed everything from one battery.

Do you guys actually have any kind of ear padding? I know some do, but out of all the guys you troop with, or whose lids you've seen, any idea? If most people do then it could save me a lot I work (and cost) on the ear padding. Without the ear padding, I can start taking the first few orders in a few days. I will go through this thread and compile an interest list shortly. (I'd do it now but I'm driving....oops!)

That's an interesting idea! Yeah! I ordered a ton of different connector types on ebay just to play around with it, but so far it all ended up in the garbage. lol

If you guys can snap a few photos, that would give me a good idea what kind of room we are working with.

That's what all the helmet enhancements and padding is for! Besides, I didn't get pulled over by the police..... Turns out I wasn't the droids they were looking for.

So, um. I decided to properly field test my eFX lid from the video..... So I drove trough the city wearing it for 45 minutes straight .....in rush hour. People's reactions were great: everything from thumbs up, to photos, to 911 calls I'm sure lol. The lenses never fogged up once! The fan was on the whole time. The external audio system had to be turned down or turned off most of the time since the car is simply too noisy for it. Though when I had it on, I was rockin it pretty hard to LMFAO on the radio in that amplified awesomeness, bobbing my lid up and down, and from side to side. It was all pretty sexy, and it knew it.

The basic idea is to have these boards tucked into the helmet tubes, so that nothing is mounted to the side walls of the lid. Before I finalize the ear pads, I want to know what people are using for cheek/ear padding. Anything?

Okay, here's what the wired setup looks like. I'm trying to figure out the best ways to make all these wires detachable, so that they are truly "plug and play", so I'm still playing around with different connector types and whatnot. For now, this is all wired solid. I'm finishing up the foam ear pads to house the two ear speakers, and will post those pictures shortly. I was going to enclose the amp boards in project boxes, but that would make it way too clunky. So instead, I will use plastic ribbing like in my video to simply cover them up.

Good news! All the parts and components are finally in, and I'm going to take a little break from my other prop projects; I should have the prototype built this week! Stay tuned, folks.

Sorry for the late responses; work is a menace To answer some recent questions: As it stands now, the kit will include the following: - 2 Foam ear pads with built-inspeakers - 2 mono amplifiers - 2 amp enclosures - 2 microphones - 9V battery housing - on/off switch - volume control - wiring (labeled) for easy snap on installation. - instruction manual - velcro hook and loop strips - extra foam (for additional support/extension padding if needed) To install everything, you might also need electrical tape and a hot glue gun. I haven't thought about doing a MONO version, but I guess I could do it. Instead of doing two microphones however, I could do one microphone (which could be installed behind the black brow strip above the nose). Electret mic are powerful and will pick up quite well from one central position. All materials are now on hand, and I am almost almost almost done! I had two failed shipments of speakers in a row, which has never happened before; both suppliers claim they sent the items out, but no shipments made it here. I purchased enough foam to stuff a mattress, and the earpads are what I'm finalizing now. I went through a few versions, and now I'm happy with what I've done. Tony (columbiamo) has graciously offered to lend me his RT lid for test-fitting purposes (i'm still shocked at his offer! WOW!), so now I should be able to do an RT version, or do a "one fits all" with more accuracy. I am doing too many projects it seems lol. I just finished my Sith Acolyte v3 Helmet prototype which I am super excited about, and I know the kit is taking a bit of time. But it's coming along! It will be worth the wait. I promise!

Ok guys. Here's the issue I'm facing with this. I have two TK lids that I am using as templates for getting this prototype built: an eFX and an AP. I had mentioned earlier that I was going to create vacuum formed enclosures for the boards, with a contoured backing to fit into the helmet tube, but I realize that everyone is going to have a different type of lid. I do not own any of the other makers' helmets, so it's going to be next to impossible to create hard plastic enclosures that will fit all. Some tube diameters are larger than others, and the electronic boards are 5x6cm rectangles. So, what I can offer at this point is soft ribbed covers like I have in my video until I come up with another way to do it (or spend a pile of cash on expanding my TK lid collection . What I've done works very well and keeps the boards protected. You may need to move some things around in your own lid to accommodate them, if you already have stuff mounted inside the tubes. I'm finishing the earpads now, which is the last piece of this puzzle! Ordered the wrong kind of foam - DOH! so now I'm waiting for the correct kind to come in. Again, since everyone's lid and internal setup is different, I will leave it up to people to figure a way out to configure the internal positioning. The earpads will be removable (they will attach to the inside of the lid via velcro - which I will supply as part of the kit), and be easily repositionable. Once the foam is in, I will put in an order to my electronics supplier for the boards, and we're set!

Update. Finishing up the plastic housing molds for the electronics. All other materials are in as well. I should have pictures of the prototype soon! Been tied up with a few orders for my Sith Acolyte masks, but my attention is now fully focused on this! Stay tuned!

Google thefoamfactory.com I got all of the decorative foam panels for my recording studio from them; also ordered some for the TK lid ear pads I'm designing. They sell all kinds of foam; you can get a large mat and cut from it what you need. In the end, it would probably be cheaper per square foot than buying it elsewhere, and it's decently priced too.

Man, I put up 4 sticky tape-fly-catcher-murdering-device-things in my garage, and within a few hours, all were black, buzzing with catch. Can't leave the garage door open for more than 3 minutes without getting assaulted by flies and wasps. Soon.... though. Very soon.... it will be -30c, and I will be complaining the other way. No. I'm doing the vocoder way it's supposed to be - all one piece. I'm just going to add to the mold afterwards, probably using different materials. We shall see.

Yes. Thank you!

Can't get into FISD at all on tapatalk on the iphone at the moment. The following messages appear: "Cannot connect to forum: the forum is either restricting access from Tapatalk, or the installed Tapatalk plugin is not working. Please contact your system administrator." ...followed by, "System message: server error occurred: class 'user' not found. (user.class.php:5)"

Wow based on all your guys' replies, i went and ordered parts to complete 10 units to start. Still working on the prototype, which I'm nearly there with! I'm juggling 5 different projects right now, and just finished my Sith Acolyte mask prototype (I'm all about prototypes it seems lol). If you wanna check it out, it's in this thread here: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=20586&st=20#entry258807

Building from scratch can be expensive, since a lot of material is wasted in trial and error. However, once you get the hang of it, and you realize what works and what doesn't, it becomes quite manageable. So, don't get discouraged! I use simple plasticine to make a general shape of whatever I want to make; afterwards, I spray some silicone mold release (although this is not all that necessary, but helps in the next step), and bondo a shell over it. Once bondo cures - which usually takes minutes, I remove the plasticine (to reuse later), and am left with a nice hard, rough mask shape to work with. I then cut, sand, and use more bondo until everything is smooth and the exact shape I want it to be. Sometimes, I sand the hard bondo shell directly, and other times I use this as a female mold to pour plaster in to create a positive mold, identical to the initial plasticine shape. For me, it depends on the project. I have a few threads on how I make my masks, which might contain some useful information for you. Sith Acolyte SWTOR and Darth Nihilus: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=20586&st=20 And TK lid sculpt: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=20889&hl=&fromsearch=1 If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks for the kind words! I never thought I'd get into this kind of stuff until one day I was looking at my TK armor and thought "I can totally do this." So I researched what to do and how to start, and here I am, learning as I go! Next steps: Took the plasticine out, and ended up with a rough female mold. Some of the plasticine was hard to remove (in the nooks and crannies) so I used a heat gun to melt it, and then wipe it out with a towel. Next, I mixed 3 milk jug sized containers of plaster of Paris with appropriate amounts of water and poured it inside. This created a positive mold. Allowed about 30 mins for the plaster to sufficiently harden, and peeled off the bondo shell. I decided to do the master positive mold out of plaster instead of bondo because plaster is A LOT easier to shape and significantly cheaper. Bondo sucks to carve and sand, and is also a lot messier. Plaster dries just as quick, sands a lot easier and cleans up with cold water. The plaster mold will remain soft enough to shape by carving with a knife for a day or so; beyond that, it will be too brittle to cut, and require sanding to shape. Once I carve it to the point where it can't be carved further (becomes too dry), I'm going to stick it in the oven on low temp to drive the rest of moisture out so that it does not clog sandpaper. As long as the top inch or two are hard, the inside can take its time drying. Throughout this entire process more plaster can be applied to fix any damage that may arise from shaping, and as long as the damaged areas are small, and the mold is left in the sun, the plaster will dry and fully cure within minutes.

In truth, I have more bondo on my fingers than skin (or fingernails) at any give time! I tried using spreaders and brushes of all kinds to apply it, but in the end nothing works better than fingers. I sometimes use a bit of acetone to thin out Bondo which makes it easier to apply with a brush, but too much acetone makes it too brittle once it cures, and too little acetone does not really thin it out enough to apply with a brush. So I always just say screw it, and use my hands. The sanding sucks just as hard as applying the wet stuff. I have 3 types of electric sanders and without them I'd be completely lost lol. I love Bondo. I hate Bondo.

I've done a pile of research on this over the years, so it will all be accurate I like the idea of idealization such as the eFX lid offers; let's face it, a civilization that built the hyperdrive, lightsaber, and the death star wouldn't build a lopsided, asymmetrical helmet. The troopers in the movie are a cinematic representation of a vision limited only by the production technology, and budget at the time. HOWEVER! I also very much appreciate the craftsmanship and originality of hand made props. Not to mention the satisfaction of sticking true to the original and following in its footsteps. My sculpt will be hand formed and as close to the "imperfect" original as I can make it. In other words, as close to being perfect as I can make it