Peep dis! Have you always wanted to have another pair of eyes on the back of your head? Or outfit your costume with big beautiful orbs? The MONSTER M4SK is like the Hallowing but twice as good, with two gorgeous 240x240 pixel IPS TFT displays, driven by a 120MHZ Cortex M4 processor that can pump out those pixels super fast. You'll get the same quality display as our Raspberry Pi Eyes kit but without needing to tote around a full Linux computer

This unique design has the eyes at the same pupil-distance as a human (~63mm) but is designed so that the nose section can be broken apart with pliers/cutters and then wired together with a 9-pin JST SH cable up to 100mm long so the eyes can be re-positioned or freely attached.

We wanted to make audio-effects easier so in addition to a class D audio amp, there's also a stereo headphone jack that is connected to the two DACs on the chip. Use it when you want an externally sound amplifier box for big effects. For small portable effects, the built-in amp can drive 8 ohm speakers up to 1 Watt.

On each side are JST-PH plugs for connecting external devices. The 3-pin JSTs connect to analog/timer pins on the SAMD51, so you can use them for sensors or GPIO devices. The 4-pin JST connector connects to the I2C port and you can fit Grove connectors in it for additional hardware support. For the PDM mic port, you can use this cable to wire to a PDM mic.

For power, you can either use a USB micro-B cable, or connect a li-poly battery to the 2-pin JST-PH “BAT” connector — either directly, or with an extension cable and the battery tucked elsewhere.

There's also plenty of sensors built in - light sensor, 3 tactile buttons, and a capacitive touch pad on the nose.

Speaking of that nose, the silkscreen is by the skillful Miss Monster, check out those fangs!

This is by far the cutest, creepiest and most incredible development board we've made so far! Gaze upon these features:

  • ATSAMD51G19 Cortex M4 microcontroller running at 120MHz with 512KB Flash, 192KB RAM (the board markings incorrectly say ATSAMD51J19)
  • 8 MB QSPI flash for storing graphics and sound effects
  • Two 240x240 IPS TFT displays each on their own SPI bus
  • Beautiful silkscreen with a boop-able nose that is a capacitive touch pad
  • Lipoly battery charge circuit for portable use
  • Stereo headphone jack out, for sound effects via an amplifier
  • Mono speaker driver for smaller 8 ohm 1W speakers
  • One 4 pin STEMMA JST connector for I2C connection (also Grove compatible)
  • Two 3 pin STEMMA JST connectors with digital/analog/PWM for servos, sensors, etc
  • One 4 pin JST SH port for connecting an optional PDM microphone
  • Backlight controls
  • Three tactile buttons
  • Light sensor
  • On/Off Switch and reset button

And as you can expect, we've got some great new eyeball code, which does 2 eyes with user-configurable graphics. Right now our code support is only for Arduino - CircuitPython isn't quite fast enough to do the 3D animation techniques we use to draw the eyeballs. The eyes look even better if you pair them with these 40mm glass or plastic lenses. (You'll need two of course)

This guide was first published on Aug 20, 2019. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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