Wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic is a must to slow the spread and for that reason there was a call in April to all mask makers to make masks. A good reason for me to try out my new sewing machine. I found a template on the internet and made my first mask the next hour. After making masks for my wife, some friends and the local nursing home it was time to take it to the next level.

I'm not new to using LED's in wearables: https://hackaday.io/project/162435-board-for-modular-led-wearables. So I decided to use that same template I was using for the other masks, but replaced the front with netting. Placed some nuFoam between the fabrics and added one of those boards from the other project. It worked and look pretty cool, but wearing this mask was very uncomfortable. The board was large and so was the battery that was just laying around. And after the battery ran empty I was not even able to get to the charging port.

And while it showed a pretty awesome light pattern, it was just not too exciting.
So on my next mask I tried something different. Instead of having the entire mask light up I decided to have the netting only in a smaller section in the shape of a hearth. I used the ATtiny1616 with the https://hackaday.io/project/165881-attiny-1-series-with-arduino-support/log/171606-using-configurable-custom-logic-ccl-in-arduino-on-the-attiny1616 CCL code to light it up.
I really liked the effect on the shape, but the mask itself was still bulky, uncomfortable and just not practical.