Sci-fi B-movie Goggles

These goggles, as if straight out of a sci-fi b-movie, have servo motors that noisily control dark lenses depending on the ambient light and proximity to other objects.

2 servos
welding goggles
duct tape
wire
a microcontroller
a proximity sensor
a photoresistor
a resistor

Solder the photoresistor to the resistor to create a voltage divider (you should pick a resistor on the same order of magnitude as your photoresistor). Attach a wire to either end, and one to the middle. One end is going to connect to the 5 V power supply, so I colored that one red. One end is ground (I colored it black) and the middle is the signal output (I used yellow for that).

I found that it was helpful to extend the length of the wires on my two servos and proximity sensor, so I just soldered on some extra long wires. I actually used some nice header pins so I could disconnect the components easily if need be, but feel free to use whatever wires you can find.

You'll end up having four ground wires and four 5V wires. Each sensor and servo takes a Vin and a ground. You'll want to group these all together to one wire. I just soldered 4 wires onto the end of one to group them easily.

Remove the dark lenses from your welding goggles.

Out comes the duct tape!

More tape!

You should also get a general idea of where you are going to route all your wires. I put my 5V wires to the right, my ground wires to the left, and the input and output wires to the side they were closest to.

Tape on the servo so the lenses overlap the eyeholes when the servo is at one of its maximum values.

I preferred to loop long coils of wire to enhance the "sci-fi b-movie" effect, but if you want to cut yours short and practical, you can do that too.

I ended up with 6 wires. Inputs to the two servos, outputs from the two sensors, a 5V wire, and a ground wire. The 5V and ground go to their respective pins on the arduino. I plugged in the servo inputs on pin 9 and 11 (digital PWM pins) and I connected the sensor outputs to A0 and A1 (analog in).

I used the servo library to program my arduino (full code below).

#include <Servo.h>
Servo servo1;  // create servo object to control a servo
Servo servo2;
int pos = 0;    // variable to store the servo position


int light = 0;        // value read from the pot
int prox = 0;
int servo1Pos = 0;        // value output to the PWM (analog out)
int servo2Pos = 0;        // value output to the PWM (analog out)

void setup() {
  // initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  servo1.attach(9);  // attaches the servo on pin 9 to the servo object
  servo2.attach(11);
}

void loop() {
  // read the analog in value:
  light = analogRead(A0);     
  prox = analogRead(A1);
 
// map it to the servo output:
  if (light > 400){servo1Pos = 0;}
  if (light <= 400){servo1Pos = 180;}
  if (prox > 400){servo2Pos = 180;}
  if (prox <= 400){servo2Pos = 0;}

  // change the servo output
  servo1.write(servo1Pos);
  servo2.write(servo2Pos);
  // tell servo to go to position

  // print the results to the serial monitor:
  Serial.print("light = " );                      
  Serial.print(light);     
  Serial.print(" servo1 = "); 
  Serial.println(servo1Pos);
  Serial.print("prox = " );                      
  Serial.print(prox);     
  Serial.print(" servo2 = "); 
  Serial.println(servo2Pos);

  // wait 10 milliseconds before the next loop
  // for the analog-to-digital converter to settle
  // after the last reading:
  delay(10);

You could wire the arduino to a battery to make the goggles mobile. You could try using a magnifying lens or gears and an aperture or something entirely different on one of the eyes of the goggles. Go wild! See what you can do.