Projects
Blade of Cognition
My final project idea is to make a large cosplay prop that matches my fursona, based on the Blade of Cognition from Shadow Fight 3 .
Design
Most of the design work can be found in the first blog. However, some of the ideas are now outdated and will be superseded by new ideas later in this page.
Handle Connector
After some discussion with my good friend Kenny Zhang (who also makes tons of cool stuff, including his own fursuit), we settled on a ball-lock connector design inspired by a pneumatic connector found on a pressurized air supply found in Metropolis.
The idea is that several ball bearings sit in a pocket on the female side and are pressed inwards by a sleeve held forward by a spring. This sleeve is tapered near the end to provide space for the bearing during insertion. After insertion, the ball bearings fall into a groove and locks the male side in place.
See my week 4 post on 3D printing and scanning to see how that mechanism worked with a 3D printed prototype!
Electronics
The electronics for this cosplay prop are fairly simple. I need
- WS2812B LED strips to illuminate the blade of the sword
- A small microcontroller, probably a XIAO ESP32-S3
- A rechargable battery (likely an 18650) in order to power the microcontroller and LED strip.