Black Rabbit LED Mask Project
Summary
The Black Rabbit LED Mask Project is an advanced wearable LED display featured in the episode "I Built the Craziest LED Mask," representing Sean Hodgins' most ambitious LED project to date. The mask contains 2,960 individually addressable LEDs arranged across multiple custom PCB panels that form a three-dimensional face covering. This project serves as the Mark 2 version of Sean's Original Become Anyone Mask from five years prior, though it takes the concept in a completely different direction by abandoning the projector-based approach in favor of embedded LEDs on custom circuit boards.
The mask is built using custom PCB panels manufactured by PCBWay that are soldered together at angles to create the mask's geometry, based on a geometric design from Wintercroft. The project represents a five-year evolution from Sean's original concept, featuring sophisticated LED mapping software to handle the non-standard matrix arrangement, dual control systems (Pixelblaze for patterns and Raspberry Pi for video playback), and a 3S battery providing 9 hours of runtime. Project files are available on GitHub under the repository name "black_rabbit," and the mask is positioned as a tool for countering facial recognition and surveillance systems through what Sean describes as "hostile visual code injection."
What Was Said
In "I Built the Craziest LED Mask," Sean Hodgins presents the Black Rabbit mask as a radical reimagining of his original projector-based face-changing mask. The core innovation came from asking "what if I made every panel of the Mask its own LED Matrix", a question that led him away from the projector approach entirely. Sean counted every single LED on the mask, arriving at the precise number: "2960. 2960 LEDs on this crazy PCB panel mask."
The project is framed within a broader context of Anti-Surveillance Technology, with Sean cryptically referencing the mask's purpose with the phrase "follow the black rabbit" and describing its capability to "enable hostile visual code injection." This positions the mask not just as a technical achievement but as a statement piece about privacy and resistance to facial recognition systems.
Sean emphasizes the project's open-source nature, making all design files available through "GitHub: https://github.com/idlehandsdev/black_rabbit" for others to build upon or modify. The technical achievement is highlighted through the mask's practical capabilities: running for 9 hours on a single battery charge, supporting two different control methods for different use cases (pattern generation via Pixelblaze and video playback through Raspberry Pi), and solving the complex problem of mapping LEDs arranged in a non-standard three-dimensional matrix.
The episode positions this project as representing significant growth from Sean's work five years earlier. Where the Original Become Anyone Mask required an awkward projector mounted on a pole at a specific distance with challenges around focusing and skewing, the Black Rabbit mask integrates everything into the wearable form factor itself, making it genuinely practical as a wearable device.
History
I Built the Craziest LED Mask
The Black Rabbit LED Mask Project is the central focus of this episode, representing the culmination of Sean Hodgins' five-year evolution in LED mask design. The episode chronicles the complete design and build process, from the initial conceptual question of turning each Wintercroft mask panel into its own LED matrix, through the technical challenges of LED mapping for non-standard geometries, to the final wearable device with its dual control systems.
Sean positions the mask as both a technical showcase and a philosophical statement about Anti-Surveillance Technology, using the mysterious phrase "follow the black rabbit" and describing the mask's ability to "enable hostile visual code injection" against facial recognition systems. The project files are released as open-source on GitHub under the repository "black_rabbit," continuing Sean's tradition of sharing his work with the maker community.