Adafruit
Adafruit Animated Eyes Bonnet for Raspberry Pi Mini Kit [Without Displays]
The Adafruit Animated Eyes Bonnet (also known as the Snake Eyes Bonnet) is a Raspberry Pi accessory for driving two 128×128 pixel OLED or TFT LCD displays al...
The Adafruit Animated Eyes Bonnet (also known as the Snake Eyes Bonnet) is a Raspberry Pi accessory for driving two 128×128 pixel OLED or TFT LCD displays along with four analog sensor inputs. It's designed for creating animated eye effects in cosplay masks, props, sculptures, animatronics, robots and more.
The bonnet uses hardware-accelerated OpenGL rendering on the Raspberry Pi for smooth, antialiased 3D eye graphics. The rendering code is written in Python, making it straightforward to customise eye appearance, behaviour and sensor responses. Standard image formats (JPEG, PNG, SVG) are decoded on the fly with no preprocessing required.
Key Features
- Dual Display Output – Drives two 128×128 pixel OLED or TFT LCD displays
- Four Analog Inputs – For sensors to control eye movement and behaviour
- OpenGL Rendering – Hardware-accelerated 3D graphics with antialiasing
- Python Code – Easy to customise eye design and animations
- Pi Bonnet Form Factor – Plugs directly into any Raspberry Pi with 2×20 header
- Best Performance on Pi 3 or Later – Due to GPU-intensive rendering
Compatible Displays
- 1.44" TFT LCD Breakout (more affordable)
- 1.5" OLED Breakout (higher contrast and viewing angle)
Ideal For
- Cosplay masks and helmets
- Halloween props and sculptures
- Animatronics and robots
- Interactive art installations
Package Contents
- 1× Adafruit Animated Eyes Bonnet PCB
- 1× Header strip
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- breakout
- A breakout is a small circuit board that makes a tiny or hard-to-solder component easier to connect to with standard pins. It matters because this OLED module can be wired into a microcontroller project without needing to solder directly to the display’s fine contacts.
- Headers
- Rows of metal pins used to plug a module into a breadboard or connect it with jumper wires. Pre-soldered headers make the module easier to use straight away without needing to solder the pins yourself.
- JPEG
- A compressed image file format commonly used for photos. It matters because the camera sends already-compressed snapshots, which are easier to store on an SD card or transmit over a slow serial link than raw image data.
- LCD
- LCD stands for liquid crystal display, a screen technology that uses a backlight and liquid crystals to show images or text. It matters because LCD modules usually need a display driver and enough controller pins or a bus interface to send image data.
- OLED
- OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, a display type where each pixel produces its own light. It matters because OLED screens are thin, high-contrast and easy to read for small status displays, but they can be more sensitive to image burn-in than some other display types.
- PCB
- A printed circuit board is a rigid board with copper tracks that connect electronic parts without loose wires. For this kit, the PCBs also form the airplane shape, so they are both the circuit base and part of the finished model.
- TFT
- A thin-film transistor display is a common type of colour LCD used for graphics screens. Knowing a product is for TFTs helps you check that the driver board matches the display’s connector, resolution, backlight, and signalling method.
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