Uncanny Eye Pendant with ESP8266 and TFT display

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Halloween is about to come and do you want to look cool in between your friends and family with your hunted or unique dress? But for those people who don’t know what is Halloween let me give you a quick introduction.

Halloween:-

In simple words, Halloween is a calibration day, on this day people wear costumes like ghosts and light bonfires. Kidswear unique costumes and go to the neighborhood’s house to get candy and chocolates. I think now you know about Halloween.

On the day of Halloween, you can wear your unique costume of ghosts, witch, or devil, I know you will choose a great costume that makes you unique in between your friends and family, but to add some spice to your costume I made an uncanny eye pendant.

Uncanny Eye Pendant

I made an uncanny eye pendant, which is scary at first sight. In the pendant, a real-looking eye mimics a real human eye which looks cool. You can wear it on your Halloween costume to add some spice to it. This pendant is so simple and good looking so you can wear it on a normal dress too. The pendant has an on/off button and a switch so you can turn it on when you want to show up in front of people. It also has Micro USB charging so you can charge your pendant when it’s discharged.

Also, if you want to buy this pendant on Tindie Page​! (This eye is not visible in sun light but in room light and in night it looks cool)

If you want to make it your self then Let’s start the tutorial, So you can make it in an easy way with an ESP8266, TFT display, and other few components.

Quartz components :-

A big thank you to quartz components for sending me stuff for this project, Do check out quartzcomponents.com, to buy components at affordable prices.

Supplies

Electronics

• 3D print of Pendant
• Wemos D1 Mini (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• 1.44" TFT (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• 134N3P (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• DPDT Switch (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• 3.7V 300mAh Battery (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• 330 Ohm Resistor (amazon.com / amazon.in)
• Some Wires (amazon.com / amazon.in )

Tools

• 120 number sandpaper
• 600 number sandpaper
• Black mat spray paint
• Soldering iron
• Solder wire
• Hot Glue
• Laptop

3D print of pendant

The encloser or a case is one of most parts of the project, for this project I designed a 3D pendant, which can hold all of the electronics.

You can download the STL file of this pendant from my GitHubpage or you can get it from the tinker cad, embedded file is given below.

Print the 3D case from your 3D printer or give it to any 3D printing company which can print for you.

Now take sandpaper, firstly I used 120 number sandpaper, which has a large grip, and sands the 3D print, make sure you are gentle at the time of sanding so you can get an even surface.

After sanding the print with 120 number sandpaper, now use 500 to 800 number sandpaper to get a smooth surface. I used 600 number sandpaper.

After sanding it, you will feel a smooth surface on the print and some dust. Wash the print to remove the dust from the print. If you have wood filler then you can fill it in the print surface to get a super smooth surface, But I don’t have the wood filler so I am not using it.

After washing it, when it gets dry, it’s time to paint it. I have used black matt paint to paint the 3D print. Place a newspaper or unnecessary paper below the 3D print and put some heavy thing on paper I have used some rocks so it won’t go away from air. Shack your paint can well and spray it on the 3D print in all directions. Before using the spray paint there are some precautions, which can be read behind the spray can.

Until your paint gets dry we will do some electronics part.

Arduinonano RP2040

Arduino nano RP2040 has fast SPI so it can work to run a uncanny eye on TFT display. you can use this board and adafruit libraries to connect this board, visit adafruit page for more details but for now we are using wemos D1 mini board.

Connect TFT with Wemos D1 mini board

Until your paint on the 3D print is dry, we will do the circuit part of this project.

As you can see here I am using a 1.44 inch TFT display and instead of ESP8266, I have used a Wemos D1 mini, But what is Wemos D1 mini?

Wemos D1 mini:-

Wemos D1 mini is an ESP8266 breakout board. It has CH340 ic to easily communicate with ESP8266 over serial, also this CH340 is helping to program the ESP8266 over serial, But first, you have to install the driver for the CH340 chip if you don’t know how to install the CH340 driver then read first begin with Wemos D1 mini.

TFT Display:-

TFT stands for thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display. It is a variant of a liquid-crystal display (LCD) that uses thin-film-transistor (TFT) technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast.

Connect the TFT display with Wemos D1 mini board as shown in the circuit diagram.

Wemos D1 mini 1.44” inch TFT

5V ----------------------> VCC

GND ----------------------> GND

D8 ----------------------> CS

D4 ----------------------> Reset

D3 ----------------------> A0

D7 ----------------------> SDA

D5 ----------------------> SCL

3V3 ----------------------> LED

Connect all the connections as given in the table above, use a thin wire to make the connections. So the wire can be fit in the encloser. Now let’s move to the next step programing.

Uncanny Eye program for Wemos D1 mini

After connecting all the connections please double check it because one mistake can blow up your LCD.

Before we upload the program to the Wemos D1 mini-board, we have to install the driver first. The Wemos D1 mini board has a CH340 chip to communicate and program ESP8266 on board. But you are not able to communicate via CH340 without installing the driver.

To make this article, short and sweet I am not gonna explain the driver installation process, but I explained it in my old article begin with Wemos D1 mini, Go and check out my article to install the CH340 driver.

If your driver is successfully installed then you are ready to program the Wemos D1 mini-board, But before uploading the Code firstly install the “TFT_eSPI” library.

Open Arduino IDE and go to the Sketch >> Include Library >> Manage Libraries and here type “TFT_eSPI” and hit enter. Now scroll down you will see the library, install the latest version of the library.

When your library is successfully installed connect your Wemos board with your PC and download the folder from my GitHubpage and open it. You will find the Eye pendant code in the folder, open the code and select the correct board and correct port.

Github :- https://github.com/vishalsoniindia/Eye_pendant_using_esp8266

Now you will see an Uncanny Eye on your TFT screen as shown in the image, if your screen is still blank then check the connection, if still your screen is blank try to connect it with Arduino Uno but remember to connect 1k resister on each pin because Arduino Uno works on 5V logic but TFT works on 3V3 logic.

Once you will see the Eye on the TFT Display now it’s time to connect the battery circuit.

Battery Circuit for Wemos D1 mini

Now TFT with Wemos D1 mini board is working fine but it is working with the USB supply via Computer or laptop. We need to make it more portable so we can easily carry it and take it where we want.

I am using here a 500mAh battery because it is a maximum size that can fit in my project and I am using a 134N3P Module.

Why we are using the 134N3P module?

This is a power bank module that has a chagrin functionality and DC to DC boost functionality on a single ic, it can charge a 3.7v Li-ion battery, and also it can boost the voltage of this li-ion battery to 5V so we can use it for our 5V applications.

Connect the circuit diagram as shown in the image, I have desoldered the USB port on the 134N3P module for easy connection and reduce the size of the PCB.

If you have noticed there is a 330ohm resistor connected on the D2 pin, this is because the 134N4p module requires a minimum of 60mA current draw to wake up continuously, it currently does not reach 60mA it will restart. So I connected this resistor on this D2 pin and it will be high when code is running on the Wemos board. The total current of Wemos board and TFT is 50mA so I connected this 330 resistor and because the pin can give 3.3v output the current draw across the resistor is 10mA, the overall current is 60mA so 134N3P module will not shut down in the middle of it still getting restart just decrease the resistance value.

Now press the on/off button in the circuit to ensure the circuit is working properly.

Insert everything in 3D Print

That’s the end of the project,

After this step, you have a nice-looking pendant in your hand.

Take your 3D print, but make sure it is fully dry. First of all, put TFT inside the front section of the 3D print which has a hole. Put some hot glue to make it stable in place.

Now insert the on/off switch in the hole on the second part of 3D as shown in the image, also place the 134N3P module at the bottom but as shown in the image, and put some hot glue. Now insert everything inside the encloser as you want.

I inserted the battery just behind the TFT display and the Wemos module behind the 134N3P module, you will see some different setups in the image, what was wrong I have changed it later but forgot to take pictures.

Close both 3D parts together with help of superglue, but before closing, everything just turns on the device once to ensure everything working fine.

Well, All done Now you are ready to rock in Halloween, I am sure with this Eye pendant you everyone asks you, where did you get it from, and I hope you will suggest my name ;p.

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