Smart World War Helmet Model With Raspberry Pi Pico

this project is for the soldiers in the early 20th century who had to unfortunately spend their time in either one of the world wars ... specifically those who were alone in enemy territory . it is a simple helmet whose style is sort of inspired by the french adrian helmets and that can detect people behind them and send a signal to the wearer via led. its a simple way to have eyes at the back of your head without actually needing to !

for the helmet

balloon

newspaper

glue

water

paintbrush

metallic paints(gold and silver would do)

black paint

for the circuit

ultrasonic sensor

jumper wires

mini breadboard

led

220 Ohm resistor

1K Ohm resistor

Raspberry Pi pico

double sided tape

power source(5v)

cookies (to eat)

blow a balloon to a size that may fit a head ,

tear up some newspaper or some tissue paper instead.

take a cup and mix some glue and water,

take a brush and apply that mix to the paper.

slowly and surely paste it on the balloon,

to make a helmet that could sustain a harpoon. (sorry that was bad)

cover the balloon with newspaper till middle of it ,

let it dry for a night , and dont let anyone fiddle with it!

note: add 2 or three layers of the newspaper

while the helmet base dries (and you recover from that horrible poem), we'll make the circuit:

i'd recommend building everything first on a full sized breadboard then later moving everything.

the VCC of ultrasonic sensor should connect to Pico's VBUS

the TRIG connects to GP14

GND to Pico GND

now heres the sort of tricky bit for the Echo:

you can't directly supply 5v to the Pico GPIO since it only accepts 3.3V..

so we need to create a voltage divider:

connect the jumper wire from the echo to the breadboard, then attach a 1k ohm resistor in parallel

then from that attach another jumper to GP16

attach two 1k ohm resistors (which are in series with each other ) in parallel with the jumper (the one to GP16)

(YOU CAN REFER THE CIRCUIT DIAGRAM FOR CLARITY)

then on another part on the bread board attach an led:

connect a 220 ohm resistor to positive(longer stick of led) then connect to GP15

the negative will connect to pico GND directly

you can just copy off of this code :)

this is on Thonny .Make sure you save it to the Pico and name it Main.py

run it and make sure it works.

if it doesnt no need to worry , just make sure your components work or if you've not accidentally plugged a jumper into another GPIO

once the paper mache has dried you can pop the balloon .

cut out excess paper.

on a piece of cardboard ,place your dried helmet base and draw the outline of the hemlet rim

then around the drawn rim ,draw an ovalish round shape close around it.

cut it out and attach to the helmet base

add more paper mache to the whole thing an let it dry again

after its dry you can paint it.

you can use matte metallic spray paint(i think that'd do the job best)

but i couldnt find any at home so i just stole my sister's metallic paints.

i mixed gold , silver , green and black in a cup, took a brush and painted the first layer

then for the second layer to give some texture to i simply took a kitchen napkin and dipped it

in paint and patched it on the helmet till i got the desired look.

wait for it to dry.

now its time to attach the tech to the helmet -and for me ,this was sort of tricky . i mostly just tried to fit it anywhere possible - i just extended the jumper wires by connecting one or two in between and attaching them to the rim of the helmet then making sure the main components were where i wanted them to be: the ultrasonic sensor at the back, the led breadboard in front of me ,and the pico... where ever it doesn't poke my head.I used some tape and rubber tack to hoist everything

its finished !!!!great ,test it out , play with it , amuse ur friends and family !

for the sake of not exposing my entire room, i made it detect things only closer than 50 cm

i think another great iteration to this project would be adding a buzzer to it , because it coulda been great for those soldiers who were running night shifts at their camps .

now that i think about it ..i'd actually wear this to my school..

thankyouuuuuu!!!