Time to put it all together!
The wiring for the costume was assembled in three sections that were hooked together with 3-pin JST SM Plugs. This makes the costume easier to put on or remove and for easier storage. The three sections were assigned as follows:
- Left arm and wrist guards tied together to for a one large gauntlet. On the forarm is the battery pack and power switches along with the lighting control Gemma. The upper arm has the first neopixel.
- Chest piece with the next two neopixels. Also the servo control Trinket/Gemma.
- The mask, with the 12-pixel ring over the eye, to complete the neopixel chain. At the side of the head goes the servo and laser/LED.
Start at the gauntlet and work your way up. Run all your wiring through corrugated split loom to conceal it all and at the same time give you all your Borg-like hoses. Add more empty split loom if you think you need more hoses.
Using a small project box or container of choice, install the battery pack and power switches. The battery's JST connect is brought outboard before looped back to a receptacle to allow easy connection to a charger (see below). Use and hook and loop tape to mount it to the forearm.
The lighting control Gemma can be mounted on the arm using either some hot glue or hook and loop to the arm. Solder and run some wiring to the first pixel and mount it as well. Terminate the output of the pixel with a 3-pin plug. Glue down the leads around the pixels for strain relief.
Run the the power for the other Gemma along with the wiring for the laser/LED along some split loom as well.
Mount your next two pixels on the chest piece and solder the wiring. Also find a good spot for the servo control Gemma/Trinket and mount it as well. Good strain relief is important or you will have breaks so don't ignore it. Solder the servo wiring out to connectors, as well as the neopixel chain.
Finally run the rest of your leads to the mask. Make sure they're long enough to allow the wearer a full range of motion. Connect the neopixel ring to finish the chain, solder and glue into place. Connect the laser/LED and tape it to the servo arm. Find a spot for the servo to mount and tape, glue and or epoxy it into place.
Plug everything and try it out!
As for wearing it: black boots, leggings and turtle-neck. Then put white makeup on any areas that will be exposed. More skilled makeup artists could get into more detail but white alone will still get good results.
Armour up starting with the chest piece, then gauntlet and finally mask. Hook up all your connecters and switch on. You are one with the collective. Start assimilating.
A couple other ideas to try:
- Add a Waveshield voice changer or to play other sound effects.
- I did attempt to run it off a single Trinket Pro and rely more on the millis() timer rather than delay(). Because of time constraints I stuck with the two controllers as I wasn't getting the results I wanted, having difficulty getting everything to play nice together.
