Working Halo Night Vision Helmet!

this is a working night vision halo helmet And today I'm going to show you how I made [Music] it So I've been a lifelong fan of the Halo video game series from playing Halo Combat Evolved on the original Xbox when it first came out as a kid to binging Halo 5 late nights in college with my friends And if they ever make a Halo TV series I hope they do a really good job with it if they ever make a TV show which they haven't as far as I care So I have a friend who runs NF Force Props the Instagram account company that makes incredibly highquality props and cosplay gear You can find him on Instagram at NF Force Props And he sent me a few helmets And a little while back I took an ODST resincast and put a transparency changing visor and some custom backlighting into that helmet and I sent it back to him So be sure to check that video out if you haven't seen it before But the one I'm keeping for myself is my all-time favorite model of Halo helmet the Halo EOD helmet Finishing this helmet with working night vision would be making two lifelong childhood dreams come true One a high-quality Halo helmet just like they have in the video games And then two working night vision which is like every kid's dream right And now that I have an engineering degree and adult money I want to try to make them both come true And I never say this at the beginning of my videos but if you're enjoying this please consider leaving a like subscribe to the channel and if you want to help me become the next hacksmith consider checking out my Patreon link in the description of the video below We hit 20,000 subscribers on YouTube this week and that is unbelievable and I am so thankful for everyone supporting Last Tech in any way Now let's check out this build Now the electrical components required to make this build possible are actually pretty straightforward Essentially I just need a low light no light camera a computer with a tiny embedded screen on it and some portable way of powering it And a few extra challenges I'm giving myself is I want to be able to stream the video feed from the camera back to my desktop so I could record it and get cool shots of the night vision stuff that I'm seeing And then I'm not setting a specific budget for this project but I want to keep it overall in the realm of what any hobbyist or maker interested could probably afford So I'm not going to run out and get like a $6,000 pair of militaryra night vision goggles So let's start with the camera I definitely heard of infrared vision as a way of seeing thermal imaging or at least in low light situations But more importantly than what infrared is is just how easy is it to use for a practical application And I found a pretty affordable USB infrared camera that supposedly would switch between its normal camera and an infrared cut filter just when it detects that the low light in the area has gone low So I got myself one of these and it was pretty cool The second I plugged it into my computer and booted up the camera app I was able to test turning off the lights in my room and I saw the infrared kick on immediately It was really cool It has infrared LED emitters on it so it sort of provides its own light source And I posted a short sharing this camera and this is where the folks who really know about infrared jumped down my throat saying "That's not a real infrared camera or this is not a real night vision application." To which I said "It lets me see things when the room is dark which is actually kind of the entire thing I'm going for So if you know more about night vision or you have a proposed different technology you would have used absolutely let me hear about in the comments below But just know I don't care Now with the camera in mind I wanted to go figure out what computer or tiny screen device I would be using so that I could see it locally but also stream the video feed back to a desktop I found these Uni-Hiker K10 and Unahiker M10 boards from the brand DF Robot So I reached out to DF Robot and they were kind enough to provide a sample of each for testing with this build Right off the bat the Unihiker K10 was honestly pretty impressive and I thought I was going to use it because for literally just a few bucks it had an onboard camera that out of the box immediately started feeding video but it was attached to the board with a ribbon connector so upping it to an infrared camera wasn't as simple as just unplugging and plugging back in So even though this is a pretty awesome board with a lot of onboard sensors and definitely some interesting IoT applications I realized pretty quickly I want to check out the beefier Uni-Hiker M10 board Now the Unihiker M10 can be connected to your Wi-Fi You can program it from a desktop using Jupiter Notebooks which is just such an easy Python IDE web-based So basically out of the box everything you need to start building cool programs with no software setup anything complicated which meant I could grab a rather simple open CV Python program to have the board scan for USB connected cameras start feeding that to the screen and then using a remote desktop connection I was able to just view what the screen was currently seeing from my desktop Also cool feature I'm also able to control it from my desktop if I want to So I could even start up or stop programs from my computer remotely So the last piece of this whole thing was powering it remotely So it didn't need to be plugged into a wall outlet And this could not be easier because this is basically a computer designed to be plugged into a USBC port on a wall outlet Any portable rechargeable power bank will work So I got a nice slim one that actually is pretty beefy and has a few hours of runtime on it but more or less any portable power pack that you probably already have sitting around could keep this thing running Now it seemed like I had the core technology figured out So it was time to make this helmet look incredible And starting from a 3D printed helmet I didn't actually know the proper way of finishing this So I went for a method I like to call guess and check So I grabbed a primer that specifically called out that it was good on plastic because I figured that no matter how I painted this I would want a good smooth primer finish to start And just hitting it with the white primer already had it looking pretty cool So I left it at this stage to do most of the electronics hookup Now starting with the camera attachment I basically designed a three rectangle system in Solid Works The first one with little corners to hold the camera inside a box that would protect all the infrared elements and the lens itself The second one essentially had an inlet for the cable and then a 90 degree turn so it would be routed toward the helmet And then the third one was just a sloped standoff so that the camera actually didn't catch too much of the helmet itself in the feed when it was running So with just poking a little hole through the side of the helmet I was able to connect the camera to the side of the helmet get the cable routed on the inside and we were cooking Now maybe the biggest trade in this whole build and the thing I accidentally split the internet on when I posted a short talking about this is whether I should try to hide this entire screen inside the helmet somewhere or build a hinged standoff mechanism My eyes just could not focus on the board anywhere inside the helmet that I had room to hide it But I also kind of wanted to challenge myself to a hinge standoff mechanism because again people are split on this But I thought it looked really cool having a helmet top mounted system Plus you don't compromise any of your visor space when you're not using it So in total to make this mechanism work I designed a screw plate for the back to mount the Unihiker M10 board too Then I found some already existing hinge files on Thingiverse that worked perfectly for a 180° swing And then I designed this cable standoff that could conceal the cables on the inside where I poke it through the helmet and then a little bit of extra sloped surface area so I could build a really strong adhesion between this standoff and the helmet since it is holding a little bit of weight with the board mounted on it Last thing to mount the battery pack was once again the easiest part There's just all kinds of room in the EOD helmet to kind of where the cheeks are And so I was able to just mount it to the side with the ports exposed in a spot that was really easy for recharging removing it if you have to and plugging the computer in And I was so pumped that all the 3D printed pieces and electronics went well together that I almost took this white primed 3D printed thing and called it done But I decided to challenge myself to make this thing look epic I found a paint scheme from galactic armory.net for the EOD that looked really cool Basically two-tone forest green and black So I got myself some green and black spray paint Spent a lot of time taping Did a few layers of each color And I'm so happy with the colors and how they came out One of the final technological challenges to this thing was that the actual computer and hinge mechanism was not staying up when I wanted it to stay up So I actually got two rather strong magnets and I put them just a little bit offset where there's some serious holding force when it's at the top Now with everything finished and put together let's just get some cool shots of this thing in action [Music] Heat Heat [Music] [Music] Heat [Music] Heat [Music] [Music] Heat Heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I definitely noticed that the effectiveness of this dropped off a fair bit at any kind of real distance And I think that's to be expected with like a 20 $25 infrared camera But the cool thing about this build is I think it would pretty naturally size up as you could afford nicer and nicer night vision cameras So I'm actually really thrilled with these results Now having the camera with the infrared emitting lights on it does give kind of a red glow just to the side of your head which admittedly would be a disadvantage in combat as in the darkness of night you would be giving people a glowing target But let's keep in mind that if you're wearing a 3D printed Halo helmet in combat you probably weren't going to make it anyways And more or less with basically a finished and buttoned up project the last thing I did was I added a matching paint job to my Magnum because the first thing any new Spartan is going to say is that they need a weapon I really hope you guys enjoyed this video This style of video is a little bit new for me so I hope you enjoyed it Thank you so much for watching to the end Be sure to let me know what sort of ideas for next project you have for the channel Don't forget to leave a like on the video subscribe to L Master Tech and if you really love the content and you want to help me grow check out the Patreon in the description below And of course all 3D print files all code all technology that I used all hardware will be linked in the description below as well Let me know with any questions and let me know what we should do next Thanks for watching See you next time Bye