The wearable electronics experts at Adafruit are going all out with Halloween tutorials this month and their 3D Printed Bionic Eye project is the latest. The 3D printed eye can be combined with a few inexpensive electronic parts to give you a creepy looking automated googly eye ball that is just the thing to give your halloween costume that extra, eye-popping touch.
The eye module itself was designed to fit perfectly to the costume goggles that Adafruit sells on its website, and can be 3D printed in either ABS or PLA. There will be a small amount of support material that will need to be cleaned away. Total print time was a little over three hours, however because the model does not need to be very strong you can reduce infill to cut that down. For this project, Adafruit used their UP! Plus2 3D Printer with a 0.15mm Z-resolution and a honeycomb fill to make the eyeball lighter.
The final eye module will be attached to two tiny servos that control the random eye movements and twitching. The eye will need to be wired to a small circuit board, and then attached to the battery pack. The entire project should cost you less than $40, and most of the parts are available directly from Adafruit so you shouldn’t need to do too much scrounging around for electronics.
Honestly, I’m usually a little scared off by some of these projects that involve wiring and soldering, but this looks extremely easy. This might be a good starter project for new makers, or an easy way to make some cool Halloween props and decorations. You don’t have to use only one eye ball, but can use two and put the goggles on a dummy or a skeleton. And depending on how good you are with 3D modelling, you could even add to the design of the eyeball. I could easily see it being enhanced with bulging veins, or even by adding in some detail to make the eye look less human.
It should be noted, that the bionic eye will impair your vision while wearing it, so you should probably remove it when you’re walking or driving(!) You can find the entire tutorial on Adafruit’s website here, as well as a link to all of the parts needed for the project.
