Overview

A Costume That Runs a Show.

Each module is a bright round AMOLED screen that can show images, GIFs and video, text, colors, and built-in animated effects — on its own, or as one panel in a bigger performance spread across the whole costume. Snap several onto an outfit and they behave like a single, synchronized light show you drive from an app.

One firmware image runs two roles — a Conductor (the brain: the master clock and the app's bridge to everything) and any number of Display modules that auto-discover the conductor and play their part on cue. Which role a unit plays is just a setting.

The Core Idea

Send the Cues, Not the Video

This is the one decision everything else hangs on. The modules talk over ESP-NOW, a tiny peer-to-peer radio protocol that's fast and connectionless — but it can only carry about 250 bytes per message. That's nowhere near enough to stream video to a dozen screens at once. So the system splits cleanly in two:

Big Media — Local

Heavy Pixels Stay Home

Every module keeps its own images and video on its own flash storage. The big data never travels wirelessly during the show — so the costume keeps performing even if your phone dies mid-event.

Live Cues — ESP-NOW

Only Tiny Cues Fly

Over the air go only small packets: a shared clock, cue triggers, and live color / text / brightness. Because every module locks to the same clock, effects ripple across the whole costume in millisecond lockstep.

So the phone is the director, not a live video feed. Ahead of time it resizes each clip to the exact screen it's going to, uploads it to that module, and lays out a timeline. At showtime it just fires synchronized cues — or hands the whole show to the costume and walks away.

What It Can Do

Working Today

These are running on the real hardware now, not planned.

Effects

A Built-In VFX Pack

No media needed: solid, gradient, plasma, fire, sparkle, rain, breathe, strobe, and radar-sweep — all computed from the shared clock, so every screen runs them in step. Plus static and scrolling-marquee text.

Media

Your Own Art, Auto-Fit

Import images or video in the app and it turns them into panel-native frames sized to each exact screen, then uploads them. Playback runs from each module's flash.

Timeline

A Show That Runs Itself

A multi-track editor (one lane per zone) lets you drag and resize blocks. The timeline then compiles to an on-device show: the conductor stores it, runs it on the synced clock, and autoplays it on boot — the phone can be gone.

The App

No Install, One Connection

The control app is a single web page each module serves over its own Wi-Fi — live look controls, a live panel preview, no download. Connect to the conductor once and you reach the whole costume, with zone targeting to address groups of modules.

Hardware & Status

One Firmware, Many Panels

Hardware

Proven Screens, Panel-Aware

The lead module is a LilyGo 1.75″ round AMOLED (466×466, ESP32-S3, 8 MB PSRAM) — the same board proven out in Planetaria. The line is designed to grow to other panels (rectangular AMOLEDs, bars, LED matrices and strips) behind the same firmware and protocol: each unit reports its exact geometry so media is sized to match.

In Development

Honest status

The foundation is built and running on real hardware: the node firmware, the wireless cue link over ESP-NOW, media upload, the browser control app, the conductor that ties them together, and the timeline that compiles to an on-device show. Multi-panel drivers are partway (several of the planned panels are driving). Reactive modes (sound / motion / gesture), whole-costume pixel mapping, and over-the-air updates are next.