RoboPi has new avatar

It is a "Party Mask". ? 

I bought it to make a robot head.   It's a very long story.  So I'll tell it in this "test" thread. ? 

I wanted to make an animated human face on my robot.   Just for fun.  So I searched the internet for sources for buying a human-like robot face.  To my utter shock and amazement the absolute cheapest one I could find was $500.  And most were over $1000.   And this was just for the face.  Period.  No animation or mechanisms included to animate it.   I though I could surly do better than this.   So I start shopping around for, ... yes,... Halloween Masks.   Unfortunately I didn't find anything suitable.  Most were monster masks, or spiderman, or a zombie, etc.   I didn't want my robot to look like a ghoul. 

However, during my search I came across a place that sells "Party Masks", not necessarily Halloween masks.  They actually had several masks to choose from listed as "Beautiful Woman" masks.   They also have "Handsome Men" masks as well.   In any case, I chose one of the beautiful woman masks.   And here's the best part,... it was only $30.  Can't beat that!

Moreover, when the mask came I was quite pleased with it.  It appears to be quite sturdy.  It's made from some kind of rubbery material that is very much like human skin.   It's a full head mask.  Including ears on the sides as well as fully covering the back of the head.  And it's all one-piece.   Although I might end up cutting it into sections so that I can more easily get inside the head to work on it.

It has no eyes.  Just openings for the eyes.  But I also found a place where I can buy realistic eyeball for only a few bucks.   The nose has open nostril holes.  But the lips are sealed closed.  I'll need to cut the lips open because I want it to be able to open its mouth.  And then I'll need to reinforce the lips.  This will  be a challenging project, but for $30 I can afford to screw it up.   Maybe even buy another one later after I have learned from mistakes.

Anyway, if you think the avatar is scary check out these photos of me wearing the mask. 

It's just a $30 experiment.  We'll see where it goes.  I fully expect to end up totally destroying this mask in my attempts to mount and animate it.   But if things go along not too bad, I can always invest in a brand new one to clean things up again. ? 

@robo-pi

Here ya go

https://all3dp.com/4/3d-print-terminator-skull-complete-moving-eyes-jaw/

Just print and assemble the head, and put the mask on it

@spyder,

This is what scares me about starting a project on GitHub.   It may not go in the direction you had originally intended. ? 

I wonder what happened to Bill?  No DB1 video today.  I hope everything is ok at his end.

@robo-pi

He said there was a Jazz Festival this summer, and that he'd be taking some time off over the summer. He didn't say when that was tho

I also posted some mechanical eyes in another post. They might be able to be crammed into the Terminator head somehow 😉

Posted by: @spyder

He said there was a Jazz Festival this summer, and that he'd be taking some time off over the summer. He didn't say when that was tho

I thought that was over and he was back.  But I guess I was wrong.

Posted by: @spyder

I also posted some mechanical eyes in another post. They might be able to be crammed into the Terminator head somehow

I already have ideas for adding eyes to Alysha's head.   Realistic eyeballs can be had for under $10.  It's even possible to modify them to be used as camera lenses via fiber optic cables.   Not sure how practical that would be though.   I do have plans to have the eyeball follow a face around using face tracking software.   Although I've been thinking of having Alysha wear a hat that actually contains the camera that she will actually use to see with. ? 

There are so many tricks to be had.

I was going through some of my old software that I wrote a while back to have Alysha listen to my voice and reply back.  The problem is that the software won't run because the computer I have it on doesn't have the Microsoft Speech Platform installed.  I just now tried to install it and the installation seems to have gone ok, but for some reason my IDE is still complaining that it can't find it.   So I'll have to get that squared away before I can get the voice program back up and running.  I have a lot of new ideas since I had written that old software.  So I'm looking forward to getting back into that programming again.