FIELD TESTVERDICT
An easy and
fun way to add
‘wow’ to your
Halloween
costumes.10 / 10
that you can use just as you would any
other microcontroller.
In a world where landfill is full of obsolete gadgets,
it’s important to be able to reprogram and reuse
your technology.
However, despite the repurposability, there’s no
getting away from the fact that these are designed to
be animated eyes. There’s something fundamentally
endearing about hardware that’s well engineered to do
a single job – especially when that job is to make
people smile. We’ve looked through the technicalspecs, and how to use it, and how it could be used in
the future, but all these are largely irrelevant. What
matters with this hardware is how it makes you feel,
and it makes us happy. We’re used to being
surrounded by high-definition screens covered in all
manner of images and details, but these are different.
Perhaps it’s because the form factor is so unusual.
Perhaps it’s because in eyes we see humanity in each
other, and therefore with these, we see humanity in a
machine. Perhaps it’s because sufficiently advanced
magic is indistinguishable from technology and these
are magic. Whatever it is, it’s one of the most fun
gadgets we’ve tested.Above
Save time on
messy carving by
adding eyes with
Velcro stripssnap). This obviously breaks the electrical connection
between the two halves of the PCB, but there’s a
solderable nine-pin JST SH connection. As there’s
lots of data flowing through this, it can’t be extended
arbitrarily as electrical interference will distort the
signal – around 10 cm should be fine, but longer than
that and you might find you have problems.
If you need more input or output, there are
two three-pin STEMMA connectors, one four-
pin I^2 C STEMMA, and a JST connector of a
PDM microphone.
ON THE SOFT SIDE
There’s no getting around the fact that the code to
perform this eye animation is complex, but it is well
structured and commented, so worth a read through
if you’re interested in what’s going on. You’ll find it
here: hsmag.cc/gogAcd.
This is also a good starting place if you want to
use this board for something different. Obviously,
a lot of it is very eye-specific, but you’ll also find
all the details of how to connect to all the on-
board hardware.
As the board is fully hackable, you don’t have
to use it for eyes. You could use it for any project
that needs two square screens. Flip them around,
add lenses and you’ve got a DIY VR setup; they
could be a screen each for a two-player game; or
they could be simply two screens for outputting
diagnostic information. Look beyond the eyes
and it’s a powerful, programmable microcontroller
There’s something fundamentally endearing
about hardware that’s well engineered
to do a single job”
”