Goggles are a great accessory for dressing up your costume -- be it for Halloween or cosplay. There are many styles and genres which can be enhanced by goggles, including cypberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, Burning Man, mad science, and clockwork, to name a few.

This year, our daughter decided to be a "steampunk girl" for Halloween! So, we decided to dress up her prop costume goggles with some LED rings animated with a sort of clockwork ticking pattern.

Using a Gemma M0 running CircuitPython is a great way to drive the pair of 16 NeoPixel rings, particularly because CircuitPython makes it so fast to iterate on color and timing in our program.

Follow along with this simple build to make your own stylish clockwork cog goggles!

You can supply your own goggles, or pick up a set of welding-style costume goggles in the Adafruit store.

In addition to the parts listed here, you will also want some foam stick tape to attach the electronics to your goggles, as well as a small drill bit and drill to run the wiring through.

You'll need a soldering iron and solder, as well as some wire cutters and strippers.

1 x Adafruit GEMMA M0
Miniature wearable electronic platform -- CircuitPython capable!
2 x NeoPixel Ring - 16 pixel RGB LED
LED rings with integrated drivers
1 x Lithium Ion Polymer Battery
3.7V 500mAh battery
1 x Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire
2m of black 26AWG wire
1 x Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire
2m of yellow 26AWG wire
1 x Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire
2m of green 26AWG wire
1 x USB cable
A/MicroB for programming the Gemma M0
The Trinket M0 is another great choice for this project, particularly if you plan to add a few more buttons or sensors, since it has more IO pins available.

This guide was first published on Oct 03, 2017. It was last updated on Mar 17, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Oct 02, 2017.

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