A hood full of pixels

A wizard costume with a face made of pixels: two flexible 128x64 LED matrix panels form a mask under the hood of a robe and show animated faces: glowing eyes, a burning skull, Matrix glyph rain, a jack-o'-lantern and more. The mask is controlled with a 1.8 m magic staff full of addressable LEDs. You select the next scene with a rotary encoder in the grip, and when you stomp the staff on the floor, the face, the staff and a sound effect from a Bluetooth speaker change together. The crystal at the top shows which scene comes next.

See the costume in action on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yXilvMO-uTY

This upload contains only the 3D printed parts. The electronics (two Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W), the wiring, the shopping list and the assembly are described in the blog post: https://there.oughta.be/a/hood-full-of-pixels

Firmware, tools, wiring diagrams and the source files of these models are on GitHub: https://github.com/Staacks/a-hood-full-of-pixels

Please note that this is not a step-by-step kit. Some parts were designed around the components I had at hand, so you may need to adapt them.

Parts

Mask

• panel_mount_half (print 2×): curved frame that holds one LED panel (240 × 120 mm, P1.875) magnetically. Each mount has 12 pockets for 10 mm disc magnets (5 mm thick, or a stack of three 1.8 mm magnets), so you need 24 magnets in total. The second mount is the same part rotated by 180°.

• joint_bracket (print 2×): joins the two mounts at the outer ends of the eye slit and sets the angle between them. Slide it on from behind and glue it in place.

Electronics case for the mask

• display_case and display_case_lid: a case for an 80 × 60 mm perfboard with M2 holes 75 × 55 mm apart. The board takes M2 screws into M2 heat-set inserts, the lid M3 screws into M3 inserts. It has openings for the two panel ribbon cables and the power wires, and a rail with cable tie slots for strain relief of the USB-C cable. It is taller than necessary for my awkward perfboard layout, so you will probably want to modify it.

Staff

• bottom_main: the base, which holds the aluminium bar (20 × 2 mm) and the power bank (needs to be adapted for other power banks, see blog post).

• bottom_plate: the cover of the power bank slot.

• controller_board_plate: holds the 80 × 60 mm controller perfboard (M2 inserts) and is screwed to bottom_main (M3 inserts).

• grip: holds the EC11 rotary encoder and two push buttons.

• connector (print 4×): joins the 1 inch (25 mm) diffusor tubes to the base, the grip and the top.

• top_base: holds the crystal on top of the upper tube.

• crystal_hollow: the crystal, lit from inside by the top LEDs of the strip. Print it translucent.

The staff body consists of diffusor tubes from old LED tubes (the kind that replaces fluorescent tubes): 1 m from the base to the grip and about 30 cm above it.

Print settings

• Material: I used PLA for the staff and PETG for the mask parts and the case, but material does not matter much. Print in black, except for the crystal: I used clear PETG, and thin white PLA should also work.

• Staff: 0.28 mm layer height is fine. All parts need tree supports (build plate only), except the crystal.

• Mask mounts: printed upright with tree supports (build plate only); feel free to find a better orientation.

• Mask brackets: print with the flat back on the bed, no supports.

• Display case: case and lid separately, with a little support for the power cable opening.

• matrixmask_staff.3mf contains my plates for the staff parts.

Source files and AI use

• Mask mounts, brackets and the electronics case (panel_mount_half, joint_bracket, display_case, display_case_lid) were generated by AI: Claude Opus 5.5 wrote the OpenSCAD scripts from my descriptions and measurements, and I printed and tested the results. The commented .scad files are on GitHub, so you can adjust the parameters (panel size, bend radius, slit width, board size, ...) and render new STLs.

• All staff parts (bottom_main, bottom_plate, controller_board_plate, grip, connector, top_base, crystal_hollow) were modelled by hand in Blender, including the technical details like screw holes and insert sizes (staff.blend on GitHub).

License

CC BY 4.0. The firmware and tools on GitHub are under GPL 3.